The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY. JUNE 19, 1918 A NEWLY FORMED DAIRY COMPANY.

Taihape Daily Times, 19 June 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY. JUNE 19, 1918 A NEWLY FORMED DAIRY COMPANY.

(With which is Incorporated The Taihape Post and Walnwimo Newa).

Among the best instances of real progress yet given by the people of Ohakune is the formation of a Dairy Association on a magnitude which demonstrates that the movement has. not started a day too soon. Very much of the day in that district is particularly suited for dairying and now that the timber industry has worked itself out around the town and very much of the country is taking on an agricultural and pastoral aspect it was only in the ordinary course of •things that the land would either drift into large aggregations for sheep and cattle ranching or that small,, intensively cultivated farms should be maintained and so contribute to the growth of an important inland centre, increasing the value of tho land in surrounding miles as well as hugely increasing the business of Ohakune business establishments. The future of the dairying industry fully warrants the course the Ohakune farmers have decided and entered upon } and, for the progress of the Taihape district and in the best interests of this town there is nothing that could contribute more than a growing tend-

ency to increase the number of dairycows. The high prices of wool and meat have induced many comparatively small-holders to go out of the dairying business; they could make as much or more profit with much less work; others have sold their small farms to aggregators and have taken up larger areas of further-back country hoping to become sheepfarmers on a pretentious scale i na few years to come. Wo have no hesitation in saying that many of these men will find that they have let go the substance and grasped the shadow. Some few fortunate ones will succeed but the many would have been far better off to have clung to their farms in a well-settled district where values of t land are constantly hardening owing to their closeness to market, and even

poor lands share m this so-called unearned increment. At the present moment there are huge stores of butter in this country, but that is no cause for alarm, not even when taken with the fact that full stocks are also held in Great* Britain. The delay in shipping away butter is only temporary owing to the abnormal demand for shipping to transport an American army of miliums to Europe that the greatest world curse ever fallen upon mankind may be brought to the earliest possible close. There are undeni- . able indications that the people of the old world are wanting no food products more than bread and butter and were the butter rationing regulations repealed to-morrow there would not bo a pound of butter in British stores unsold, despite the fact that they are crammed full to-day. The butter industry cannot help coming into its own at the close of war; if New Zea- j land produced ten times its present

output it would not be able to supply the demand when all rationing and blockading is removed. , There has been cause for fear that this Dominion might lose its butter connection owing to dairying being abandoned for wool-growing, and we are of opinion that the Government should have exercised whatever influence was practicable to prevent a decrease of dairy-farmers. There is an aspect of this rush of small capitalists from their dairy farms to sheep runs which should not be left out of their calculations. Just as sure as they exist there will be a huge demand for money and money will appreciate in exact proportion to the demand. Money will of necessity be scarce and it will be little use our Government fixing interests at six per cent, if it cannot be borrowed in Britain at one or two per cent. less. We are convinced that the Ohakune men who aro devoting their lands to dairying now are going to be the well-to-do men after the war; they will be the envy of those who have wasted their opportunities looking for something of only a fugitive value. Wo6l may recede in I price and meat values may drop more especially if o ur Government continues I

to wink at meat trust operations which are still allowed to flourish but butter prices are assured. The dairy farms of Europe are mostly rmned through the depletion of stock brought about by Germany offering fabulous prices for Dutch, Danish, Swedish and 'Norwcgiait sto«k F . and V the aJmost total •destrucstibn iof dairy herds in Southern Europe and in Russia to provide meat for armies fat to sustain life in civilians. Mr. Massey never gave better advice to the farmers of this country than «'hen he urged them to rear all their young stock. He said, -if settlmeent was to be kept up then a great deal more stock would have to be reared »

Dairy stock is the greatest essential to" tho young settler; the first thing required on newly grassed bush land ? oven before much of the bush is fallen is stock; cattle that will live and grow fat where sheep would be worse than unprofitable. Mr. Mas'sey should not have rested content with telling people to rear their young stocky something more was required. Sixty or seventy thousand men will be returning after the war, and if only those who farmed when they enlisted go back to the land, there must be a stock famine if the utmost is not done now to secure a reasonable increase. With an abnormal demand for ,dairy stock prices will probably reach almost prohibitive heights. In fact the men who throw their very utmost into dairying and rearing dairy stock now, are the men who will reap the big reward after the Avar. We would bo glad to know that farmers around Taihape were emulating the foresight of Ohakune farmers by .forming other dairy companies and devoting their farms largely to the production of butter and cheese. At this moment cheese is unobtainable in Britain and the sum total of what we could send would be nothing more than "the drop in the ocean." It is time for the small holder to think of the future and compare the prospects of dairying with those of wool and meat growing. Ohakune, by tho establishment of new dairy factories is entering upon a new lease of iife and a new era of progress