DAIRY FARMERS’ LIVES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 252, 21 September 1940, Page 6

DAIRY FARMERS’ LIVES.

Descbibed as the first of a series of studies dealing with various sections of the community, a survey of the standards of life of New Zealand dairy farmers has been completed by officers of the social science research section of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The results, based on the information gained concerning the life of live hundred dairy farmers and their families, reveal much industry on the part of those who undertook their compilation and also numerous unique facts hitherto untouched in the field of social science. They deal with all manner of things ranging from living conditions, hours of work, expenditure, and consumption to leisure time among the people studied, and as a means of revealing the standard of life on the dairy farm the survey leaves little out of account. On the purely economic side it deals, for instance, with the total area and effective area of farms, the size of herds and carrying capacity, production per cow and per acre, the size and composition of households, size of families and so on. One outstanding feature refers to occupational history. Questions, it is stated, are often raised as to the farmer’s experience, and so far no reliable evidence had been produced to show what type of men are engaged in dairy farming. Satisfactory information about occupational history, the survey bulletin adds, was obtained from 448 male occupiers. Twenty-nine per cent, bad been on dairy farms all their working lives, while the remaining 71 per cent, had had experience in other branches of industry. Present dairy-farmers, it is contended, are, therefore, in a large majority '’recruited from other occupations. Housing and household equipment,. the number of homes provided with baths, water supplies, radio sets, and electrical equipment, are other features laboriously set out._ In the chapters on work and leisure it is shown that in the busy season the average farmer works as long as G 9.99 hours a week and hired employees G 4.94; the farmer’s wife, on the qtlier hand, contrary to some opinions often expressed, is shown as requiring 31.78 .hours a week for her household tasks. Individual farmers’ hours of work are revealed as ranging from nine to 112 a week; nearly 39 per cent, of the farmers were in the 65-74 hours class, while altogether 65 per cent, were in the 65-74 and 75-84 hours’ classes. ■ These are but a few of tlie points in & niass of .closely gleaned information.