OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 170, 27 October 1910, Page 7

OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

Bv R. J. EAMES.

RURAL NEW ZEALAND UNDER REVIEW. XO. li. Bein,™ the first of a Series of Articles—statistical and descriptive—concerning the Life and Activities of Rural Xew Zealand. [ [ I

[All Rights Reserved.] TARANAKI: ~THE PROVINCE PROLIFIC. In selecting Taranaki as the starting point for this review the writer is actuated by no other motive than that of convenience. But at the same time this is a province of such extraordinary fertility—and the bounding prices of its pasture lands have brought it under such pointed and general attention —that the district for its own news worth will very well serve as an initial field for investigation. Sixty-eight years ago it was realised that Taranaki had pleasing possibilities of profitable carpets of lush grass, but the idea apparently did not suggest itself to writers of that period that within so short a space of time forest and fern would be cleared and the countryside would present the appearance of smiling prosperity it wears today. In 1812, Dr. R. Jameson, one time surgeon superintendent to emigrants to South Australia, wrote a record of .his travels in Xew Zealand, but the most the author could say of "the garden" was this: "In the district of Taranaki. which is possessed by the New Zealand Company, grass is said to be in sufficient abundance for the maintenance of cattle!" The official declaration of [ the year 1010, under the authority of the Right Hon. the Prime Minister, is: "Taranaki may be said to be the most I compact and fertile district of the Dominion!" So much by way of introduction.

AX AMAZIXGLY FERTILE CORXER,

If tlie reader will take a map of New Zealand, and with that before him carefully peruse the following paragraph, he will <be relieved of any suspicion that the immediately preceding cross-heading deals recklessly in superlatives. Take the map furnished iby .the Government in the railway time-table. On the left-hand side of the Xorth Island the most prominent feature of the coast line is Cape Egmont. Close to the right of the asterisk which locates Mount Egmont there is a red line running north and south. That represents the railway between Hawera and New Plymouth. If you put the ball of your thumb over the territory cut off by the railway line to the sea, you will have beneath it an area which takes away only a small scrap from the bulk of the North Island of New Zealand. Yet that territory, with a little strip to the east of the railway line added, produced last season, at average London prices, butter and cheese to the value of £1i,200.000. I am giving these figures upon the calculation of an official of the Egmont Box Co., who puts down that sum as being required to fill the boxes and cases supplied during the season by his company alone. Besides that great amount of dairy factory produce it is estimated that the land under the point of your thumb is capable of raising every year 100,000 bacon pigs. Nor does the foregoing exhaust the capabilities. There is still a lot of land under sheep and dry cattle, although every year farms are bein? added to the area under milch cows. Bound about the Gloverroad factory, close to Hawera—just by way of common example—there are something like 1300 acres of valuable country not milked upon, but which, it is said, is to be cut up next year for dairying. In this vicinity some farmers think that J .■£6s per acre is not too much to pay.' But bankers and financial authorities stiffen when one talks of it. Of all the rich corner to which we have just made reference the most fertile part skirts the southern coast of the bigger part of that protuberance the point of which we know as the Cape. It is there that tho Hawera. Norinanby, Okaiawa and Mangatoki factories, as well as those three great co-operative concerns Biverdale, Kaupokonui and Joll's—are situated.

PROJECT CONCERNING PICS. Tl;e Ye<ar Book giv.es the number of ' swine in the whole of the Taranaki district in 100!) as 50,265, which makes the foregoing estimate (Ii00,0fl0) appear disproportionately high, but it has to be remembered that the of pigs as a valuable side line to dairying is only beginning to be fully realised. Lately there has been a great revival of interest in pigs. Farmers with long heads have begun to recognise that if the principles of co-operation—which have proved so beneficial in the manufacture of butter and cheese—could be applied to bacon, the earning capacity of the farm Would be greatly increased. Taranaki has not got to the stage where co-opera-tive pig-raising is contemplated, but there is a very strong agitation afoot to kill and cure and market pigs, with groups of dairy factories as contributing shareholders in the "ham and bacon business. The heads of the movement about Eltham and Mangatoki have both eyes open. They are calculating not only upon the 1 finished ham and bacon, but are enquiring into the values of the multifarious by-products. They are thinking American thoughts just now. They want, if they can, to turn even the squeal to profit. Later on we shall have something ; more to say about this project. Just now it is undeveloped, but there is evenevidence that it will materialise within a short space of time. A MODERN CANAAN. Literally, Taranaki is a land flowing with milk and honey. The production of a high percentage of butter-fat, and the largest possible quantity of milk, gives daily exercise to the energies of the dairy fanner of capacity. The clover fields and garden blooms give everwidening scope for the operations of the busy bee, which is beginning to count its annual gatherings in tons. The climate is invigorating and healthy, the rainfall is abundant, and the grass grows all the year round. It is a land of rather remarkable compensations. If the dwellers in the townships complain occasionally that the spells of wet weather are too prolonged, the men on the land rest content in the certain knowledge that a heavy rainfall is a Providential dispensation. The porous nature of the soil requires it imperatively. If the gardener inveighs against the salt sprays which have carried devastation amongst his spring crops and burnt the foliage 'j black, the dairy farmer knows that even if a temporary check to the grass has occurred the pastures have been sweetened and savoured that they may yield a greater abundance. In the days of brili limit sunshine these mellifluous meadows I are the last word in pastoral beauty. ' Snow-crowne<l Egmont stands for ever as lihe beacon to show the way to the searchers for the modern Canaan. But there is the law of compensation again. I People who would come to spy out the

lands in these days must be prepared to pay 'the price. With that aspect of the question we will deal in its proper place. Every year there is a heavy ebb and (low of population, and it will be interesting to enquire into the causes.