MUNICIPAL MILK SUPPLY.

Southland Times, Issue 18858, 25 June 1920, Page 2

MUNICIPAL MILK SUPPLY.

To the Editor. Sir, —It is ruppo-icd by dairymen that milk and milk p-o-luet.s will become deurci as time goes on in view of the properties discoverable in milk. The Corporation of Invercargill has different endowments of land in the country which might be profitably converted into dairy farms and farmed as such by the Town Council. I think it will be agreed among dairymen (hat if these farms were properly fanned it will give the council a handsome return and supply the householders with milk- at a reasonable price. There are dairymen who have taken as much as £9 worth of milk per month from one cow for the greater part of a year, although they have been retailing the milk at 1/6 per gallon but to-day the milk is delivered at the houses at 6d. per quart, that is 2s per gallon. That would bring this man’s milk to £ll 5s per month per cow. Take, however, an ordinary' good cow. She will give three gallons of milk per day for eight months of the year if she is well attended to and if the Corporation would retail the milk at 4d per quart that would give a return of £6 per month for eight months of the year, and, considering that those farmers who supply dairy factories receive at present during a season some 8d or very little more per gallon for their milk, it should surely pay the Council if they received 1/4 per gallon. That would supply the householders with milk at 2d less per quart than they pay now and would leave a handsome margin of profit to the Council. When we consider that those farmers who supply dairy factories had to buy their land at anything up to £6O per acre, find plant, cows and everything and then supply the factories at not much more than 8d per gallon for their milk, surely the Council, with free land, should get a good return by improving and cont erting their endowments into dairy farms by practical working and handling of the same. When we also consider that there arc four dairy factories not far from Invercargill in what was not long ago all dense forest, yet a number of settlers have taken up sections and cleared some of this former bush and produed in their factories, Gorge Road 1016, Mokotua 923, Tisbury 1463 and Woodend 1081 crates of cheese this last season. When we also-consider that these settlers had little or no capital when they settled there and they were no failures, surely the Town Council, with its means, should do better. They have a large endowment in Seaward Bush and they intend to let a farm at Roslyn Bush. The householders should insist on the Council’s making use of that land for dairy purposes and

start now and supply some milk for the coming season as far as it goes for a start. They have the means to buy a good herd and farm well. The Dairy Commissioner for New Zealand. Mr Cuddy, said some time ago, and that still holds good, that the dairy farmers of this country could take £1,000,000 more for milk from the same number of cows as they have now if they had betters cows and better feed. It is such bodies as a Corporation which has (he means to show others what can be done with a piece of land when well cultivated and stocked with carefully selected animals both bought and bred on the place.—l am, etc., N. A. NIEDERER.