PRODUCTION COSTS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 225, 23 February 1928, Page 6

PRODUCTION COSTS.

USE OF HORSE LABOUR. Maintenance of a Team. Just what it costs to maintain a team has never been satisfactorily determined in New Zealand. Attempts have been made, but the findings were little more than averages worked out on a collection of farmers’ figures, which, again, were little more than rough and ready estimates. The fact that they spread from the ridiculously high figure of £762 down to £446 for a six-horse team discredits them. A bulletin on farm economics has just bpen issued by the South-Eastern Agricultural College at Wye, Kent, England, and it deals with horse lab« ur. The figures were obtained from a number of farms luring the last three years, and are the result of an elaborate double entry system of costing. Purchased fools were charged at the average buying price; home-grown foods, such ns oats, barley and beans, at the approximate market price; while liay, fodder, and green feed were generally charged on the basis of cost of productinr.. This is a principle in wheih all will not agree, although it is approved of by many of the leading costing experts. Others consider that any commodity such as hay for which there is a regular market—should be charged at its market price (less all expenses of marketing) and not at cost of production. The figures given show that '.lke average cost per horse per week was about .14s, and the average number *cf hours worked per horse per week was 33, but the results varied considerably from farm to farm. But the “efficiency and management of horse labour cannot be measured by reference to costs alone,” the bulletin continues. “A system of farming may be ‘ wasteful’ of horse labour, as such, in comparison with finance, and the board had said it would recommend the transfer of works to anyone the company concerned wished to sell to, in order to help them out of their difficulties, and that free right had been set out in writing to certain companies. The board would make a recommendation, and usually the Minister adopted the recommendation of the board. If a company wished to sell to Borthwiek the board would recommend a transfer to Borthwiek or to anyone else to whom the company wished to sell. The board had to stand by its resolution, and it believed it would not be in the interests of the farmers or the meat trade generally to rescind it. If the farmers wanted the resolution altered, let them say so, and the board would consider the request. At present the financial difficulty seemed to be centred in Dunedin. It might be well to have a meeting of farmers to study the position, and any resolution passed by the meeting would receive the consideration of the board. At present, ; however, the board was the responsible body, and it accepted the responsibility of its actions.—(Applause.) In answer to a question, Mr. Hamilton said he did not know whether there was any truth in the rumour that Borthwick was running the Waingawa works in the bank’s name. For all he knew, Borthwiek might be running any of the works.

other systems, but the results may fully justify the particular system of horse management that is involved. A farmer may, by keeping a poor class of horses and by feeding them very sparingly? succeed iu having a low cost of horse labour per hour, but if the cost is 4d per hour against 6d per hour oh another farm, there is no real economy if the work done on the latter farm is 60 per cent, more than on the former —as already pointed out ‘one horsehour’ is a highly variable quantity as regards output of work.

This observation by the experts, of course, is practically ‘padding.” The simplest, farm economist and the most unpractical farmers know that a bag of bones is a poor working proposition compared with a well-fed animal. However, it is interesting from the foregoing to learn that tlie cost of maintaining a horse is set down at 14s per week, or 52 weeks in the year at £36 Ss- This works out at £2lB Ss for a six-horse team for the year—less if an allowance is made for a larger number of horses. The one official effort made in New Zealand three or four years ago set down the cost of maintaining a six-horse team at £S4S, but the economists did not base their calculations similarly.

As a matter of fact, the Homo cnlcultion relations to “feeding,” and the New Zealand to the “cost of upkeep,” which would include shooing, covers, replacements, etc., but oven then these items should not cost nearly double the actual feeding. The practical farmers’ view probably would be that the Home figures are as unreasonably low as the New Zealand ones are high. Most farmers would bo content with a job maintaining six-horse teams at about a half-way house between the two sets of figures—sny somethino- in the vicinity of £4OO.