PRODUCTION OF PIG MEAT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 163, 10 June 1940, Page 12

PRODUCTION OF PIG MEAT.

IMPORTANCE OF INCREASE. At a meeting of the Wellington District Pig Council attention was given to the vital question of raising the level of pig production in this district., Britain’s supplies of bacon have been cut off to the extent of more than three-fifths by the invasion of Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands. In addition to this, the domestic production of baconers in Great Britain will be reduced by the increasing shortage of feeding stuffs. New Zealand farmers, it was stated, are in the position to make a real contribution to the Empire’s war effort by increasing baconer production. In the Great War. when bacon supplies from the Continent were cut off the United States filled the gap in supplies, but dollar exchange is now much too precious to be expended on produce that the Empire itself can produce. If every dairy farmer supplying a butter factory were to produce a baconer for every cow milked, and there are many farmers who are doing this to-day, the Dominion’s pig-meat production would be increased by 50 per cent., it was stated, and this was not an ambitious objective. It was one easily attainable, and one which it was the duty of every dairy farmer to try to achieve.

The Wellington District Pig Council intends to do everything in its power to assist farmers in attaining this level of production. It has unreservedly offered its services to the’ Controller of Primary Production in any national endeavour to increase baconer production. One of the most critical factors influencing the development of baconer production ie a continuous supply of barley and other grains as supplementary feed. Farmers in tlie Manawatu and Rangitikei districts, even if they are not pig producers, can assist the dairy farmer very materially by ploughing up pasture and putting in grain crops, particularly barley, which is the most useful feed for the pig producer and one of the most certain and profitable for the grower, the council said.' The full value of barley for pig feeding is contingent on the dairy-furmer himself growing sufficient roots for the wintering of more store pigs. In the past mangolds have proved their worth for this purpose in conjunction with meat meal. To-day, a new crop, sugar beet offers an even more effective means of wintering pigs in a forward store condition. Dairy farmers are being asked to make immediate plans for the growing of root crops so that an increased number of pigs may be fattened to bacon weights next’ year.