A DAIRYING PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 34, 3 August 1911, Page 4

A DAIRYING PROBLEM.

In a recent issue the Auckland Herald writes upon the necessity of raising winter feed for stock. What it says applies with equal force to the province of Taranaki, and can he read with profit by those desirous of seeing the most made of our abundant, if to a large extent neglected, resources. On account of the peculiar advantages of its climate and soils, Nevr Zealand is able to form pastures almost unsurpassed in any other part of the world, it says, and this fact has, no doubt, stood in the way of tlu» more extensive fanning which is practised in many other countries. As long as land was cheap and the price of produce low there was no great in-

diicement for our settlers to eontem-1 plate seriously tlu; expense and trouble [ of cropping; lmt now, with farms selling* at values nearly as high as in the most favored parts of Great Britain, and with an ever-increasing demand for our farm products at prices undreamt of a few years ago, there is a very strong inducement for our settlers to increase the productive capacity of every acre they possess, it may certainly he considered a reproach to our farmers that live stock of any kind should go short of feed I through our brief winters, just as it is I that a few months of warm dry weather in summer should send down our butter exports by tens of thousands of pounds. There is more in the matter than mere reproach, for great staple industries are affected. As Mr. W. F. Chrichton, the honorary secretary of the Manchester Butter Conference, recently pointed out, it is necessary that New Zealand should keep the British markets supplied with dairy produce, because British consumers and British agents object to our short season of supply, and are compelled to take up with other brands when ours are not on the market. . Nor is this all.: We have only to look to the conditions wliich occur every winter in this coun-1 try; solely through lack of winter feed! butter regularly rises to fanciful prices, and every householder in the Dominion has to pay the penalty. ... Fodders and roots can be grown through every month in the year, and even where circumstances make cultivation difficult there is always the opportunity of making use of the summer abundance of grass in the shape of hay and erisilage. Wintei- feeding is not only a necessity for winter dairying, but for 1 summer dairying also. Cows half starved from June to August are not in a fit condition to give profitable results when the dairy factories open in September; and winter feeding is not only essential for dairying herds but for every other class of stock. Aa to the financial side of this question, it may be laid down as an absolute truth that the systematic raising of suitable crops, even on a small scale, could easily double the carrying capacity of our pastures, and this would mean an increase in our exports of from £15,000,000 to' £17,000,000 annually. This wopld bene-1 fit the towns no less than the country, and is a consideration worthy of the attention, not only of our farmers, but of our statesmen.