FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 144, 5 November 1912, Page 6

FARM AND DAIRY.

Southland farmers anticipate heavy crops of cocksfoot this season. A motor plough is now in use in the Marton district. A cow to the acre and 5001b of butterfat per cow is ft standard well within range of practical possibility, and it is one which we have urged on our dairy farmers as well worth working for (says the Auckland Herald). We should not reach it, of course, for some years, but there is no reason why we should not reach it. It would mean 2,100,000 cows instead of 700,6*0, and it would meai close on £50,000,000 a year instead of £G,300,000. This eeems an extravagant estimate, but no one can deny that it is possible, and the £so,ooo,ooo'worth of dairy produce would just as easily find a market in a few years as our present output does. Writing from New ¥ork last month, an American statistician declares that j never in the history of the United States has the aggregate or all crops been so large as tne estimate just published by the Government. This statement gives out that the value of the crops will be at least a billion dollars greater than last year, and the tonnage to be handled by the railways was so inflated that an enormous increase in their business is anticipated, regardless of a possible increase in haulage rates. The informaItion from Europe leads to the supposition that there the crops will be the poorest for the past thirty years. )' "These facts," says the writer in question, "create a stock situation extremely bullish from both an investment and a I speculative point of view." An interj esting feature of the phenomenal Ame--1 rican harvest is its reflection on the steel trade. In anticipation of a busy season the railroad companies are straining every nerve to cope with the traffic, and lines are being renewed and extended in such haste that the steel mills are wprking to their limit in the endeavor to provide the necessary equipment. The copper trade ts also in a strong position, because of the reduced eost of electrical machinery, and the consequent wholesale electrification of all kinds of electrical plamts.