THE BENEFITS OF BUTTER FAT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 124, 16 August 1927, Page 8

THE BENEFITS OF BUTTER FAT

WHEN lialf-a-million sterling is let loose in a limited area, business puts on a brisk air, and there is a financial buoyancy that is beneficial all round. This month bonus payments on butter-fat. aggregating £475,000 will be distributed by the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company. This is £63,000 more than was distributed last year, and will make a very handsome present for the farmers, whose Spring activities will be stimulated considerably. Not only the farmers will benefit. It is at a time like this that the full significance of the dairying industry to the Auckland Province is made clear. Plainly, the hundreds of thousands of people resident in this fertile area owe the greatest part of their prosperity to butter-fat, and due homage must be paid to the labours of the man on the land. For it is to him (and in no small measure to the wonderful organisation of the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Company) that we look not only for our butter, but for the bread to spread it upon. Yet, in considering all this, we must not iose sight of the fact that it is a bad thing for a country to depend too greatly on one particular industry for a continuance of its prosperity. Every effort should be made to push forward the secondary industries that are so bravely fighting against difficulties, including the discouragement of inadequate protection. The land alone will not support all the people the country needs, and as Mr. Frank M. Hills pointed out in an excellent paper on “Secondary Industries,” read before the Economic Society last evening, to get “the economic best” out of New Zealand, there should be a population of from ten to twenty millions, instead of a mere one and a-half millions. What is needed is a healthy industrial life, to co-operate with the endeavours of the primary producers in building up a strong and progressive community and a nation that is reasonably selfcontained.