PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1880. CATTLE EXPORT.

Patea Mail, 9 December 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1880. CATTLE EXPORT.

Farmers arc practical men, or they arc nothing'. They look well ahead. Farmers on this coast are looking to Auckland as a future market for fat stock. Have they calculated what is likely to happen there ? They have seen that the Auckland market is soon glutted ; and that the demand is good for just a short time in winter. They will soon see thirty thousand acres of the Upper Waikato plains worked as grazing land by Lincolnshire farmers. Ten thousand acres arc river-side swamp, easily drained and very rich. The land has cost about 32s an acre all round, as compared with £5 or £G on the Waimate Plains. The Waikato farmers will be better paid at a lower price for fat stock than those who farm high-priced land on this Coast, The small quantity of outside stock which the Auckland market can lake will, it seems to us, be more than supplied by the new Lincolnshire settlers up the Waikato. This does not allow for other enormous runs which are being opened by the Stndholm Company in positions convenient for the Auckland market, this Studhohn land being selected with a shrewd eye to business, and to be worked with plenty of reserve capital.

These visions of a large regular export b} r way of Waitara arc not substantial. They are visionary, and that is all. There is not the trade that way to absorb the large and increasing export of fat stock from ibis district. Patea district farmers should form a dear opinion as to the direction which our export trade is likely to take. Instead of relying only on grazing, they would do well to go into mixed farming. The more stock the district produces, the less value it is likely to fetch so long as the markets arc Jew, and of course the freightage will continue high in proportion to the limited export.