THE BOOM IN BUTTER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 340, 16 March 1910, Page 4

THE BOOM IN BUTTER.

Taranaki dairymen have, been on a particularly good, wicket this season. The ■weather conditions have teen extraordinarily favorable.—a mild winter, an early spring, and a moist yet fine summer: ideal conditions for dairymen. The like has never previously been experienced. Record outputs, have been the order. And the season i® not yet finished, for there is an abundance of grass in most localities, while the returns from the cows are keeping! up well, notwithstanding that most of the animals came in unusually early. Prices, too, have on the whole been favorable, whilst that at present obtaining is simply at boom level. As a matter of tact, the price, namely, '2Bs per cwt, is, with one exception, higher than" has ever been offered in any year since the trade began. The exception was in February of 1908, when the price reached 150s for a few shipments, the average, however, being between 123s and 1245. In March of last year the price was 106s. The gratifying feature about the increase in price is the fact that the producers will, to a very large extent, derive the benefit, instead of the merchants. The latter, after their disastrous experience of the previous year, were not keen on buying outputs last season, with the result that companies were practically forced to consign. As things have turned out, this has proved a really rortunate circumstance. We have always believed in the consigning policy. It stands to reason that if consignment is regularly followed the producers must in the end come out on the right side. The buye"s are not in the business for the benefit of the producers, or the consumers either, for that matter. They are a shrewd and keen lot of gentlemen. They are in the business to make money, and if they drop money one year they naturally look to recoup themselves in another. It is safe to say that fully 75 per cent, of the companies of Taranaki have consigned this season, and if the prices are maintained at their present level or thereabouts our dairymen should obtain handsome returns. On. Satan day the views o'i the situation taken by a number of the leading exporters in Wellington were obtained by a Dominion representative. With one exception these gentlemen were of opinion that the advance in price was due almost entirely to a shortaee in British and Continental supplies. TBefe has been no shortage in either Australian or New Zealand butter. The position is. in fact, very much the other way. Messrs. ,T. B. MaeEwan and Comoanv's market report, for instance, shows a total shipment of butter from Kew Zealand from Ist September last to d»lte of 14,100 tons, as against 11,280 tons for the corresponding period of last season, an increase of no less than' 18 per cent. The Australian butter shioments up to.the end of Fe'nruarr. ncoordirsr to the same firm's a'lvices. total 23.000 tons, an increase of IO.fIOO tons over last season. Fully half of this extraordinary increase comes from Victoria. Tt is thus obvious that the increase in nriee depend® on other factors than a shortage of colonial supplies. The Dominion writer °avs: "There is alwavs a flv in the ointment. As the crusty old English farmer said when he

harvested in his record wheat crop, it 'be terrible wearin' on the ground.' So in this case t'he drawback to the big prices is that they give margarine people an excellent opportunity of pushing their goods. Margarine will now be selling where butter went before. That was what happened during the boom of 1008, and, temporary as it was, chat short period of high prices enabled the margarine manufacturers to establish connections that they have maintained ever since. A leading exporter remarked on Saturday: 'Periods of excessively high prices, despite the temporary gain, are really bad for us in the long run. We have lost by them before, and we will lose again.' No doubt the ordinary producer will comfort himself with the reflection that pleasant indeed is it to lose thus,"