THE DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 170, 24 December 1914, Page 6

THE DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

ITS WONDERFUL STRIDES. TAIiANAKI'S GREAT SHOWING. A New Zealand industrial map which has conic from the Bristol and Dominion Producers' Association is quite a fascinating illustration of the wonderful strides the dairying and freezing businesses have made in the Dominion. Figures in red indicate the various butter and cheese factories, which 1111111ter altogether, 40.1, and the freezing works, marked in black-, total thirty-one" The map shows at a glance the districts m which the dairying industry is the mainstay of the man on the land. Taranaki, for example, is thickly dotted with red spots, which indicate factories, and the Manawatu and Wairarapa districts are a mass of similar indicators. In the. South Island, Banks Peninsula and the vicinity make a very respectable showing, but Southland clearly is the principal home of the dairyman south of Cook Strait. Tha handy analysis of the industry throughout the islands shows that in the Auckland province there are seventy-six butter and cheese factories, in Taranaki eighty, in the Wellington district seventy-nine, in Hawkc's Bay twenty-six, Nelson and Marlborough twenty-two, Westland ten, Canterbury twenty-one, and in Otago and Southland fifty-three. Taranaki, therefore, still holds the proud position of being the "top sawyer" butter-fat province in the Dominion.

Taranaki's dairy productivity, indeed, is amazing considering the comparatively small area of cleared land at present devoted to the cow. Nearly all its factories are situated between Waitara in-the north, and Patea in the south, limits which, however, include the very richest land in New Zealand for the purpose to which it is devoted. Out of Taranaki comes 5993 tons of butter and 10,551 tons of cheese per annum (returns up to the end of last March); its cheese total is just about equal to the aggregate exported from the rest of the Dominion. Auckland easily leads in butter; its output for 1013-14 was 13,550 tons, with but 1501 tons of che 'se. 111 Wellington provincial district the cheese and butter making businesses are more evenly balanced. Canterbury's tally is 2357 tons of butter anil 1087 tons of cheese, and Otago and Southland send away 228!) tons of butter and 772S tons of cheese. The grand total for the Dominion last season was 31,858 tons of butter and 40,247 tons of cheese, worth £4,335,202. As for frozen meat, it brought us in last season £6.810,543, and the wool clip returned us £8,349,882. Wool, therefore, is still our great standby, but the dairyman and the meat-raiser are steadily working upwards, with a tally that'inakes a notable advance each year; and the progress would be even more marked were more done, to open up suitable blocks in convenient areas for the small farmer.

The blank spaces 011 this dairy factory map are suggestive of neglected opportunities and of the spurt, that must come when the small farmer attains his desire. In our own island, for instance, the map shows only three butter or cheese factories in the whole of North Canterbury and Marlborough between Kaiapoi and Blenheim, a distance of a hundred and fifty miles. Here, of course, it may be said that much of this country is more suitable for other pursuits that dairying, but there surely is room for more attention to the branch of farming enterprise that is peculiarly the sphere of the small holder, and that docs more than any other department of country industry to build up rural population and prosperity. In the North Island, there is a significant blank again m a large area of the Hawkc's Bay country, an early settled, but still sparsely settled and squatter-monopolis-ed province. On the other side of tho North Island, the King Country areas show a sprinkling of red dots that denote factories, dots still widely separated, for that big and newly opened country is just beginning its' dairying career. The time is not far distant, however, when a very large portion of the Kohepotae, the central parts, at any rate, will be as plentifully starred as Taranaki with butter and cheese factories, each the centre and the chief source of income for comfortable little settlements 1. Similarly the beautiful counnj of the Bay of Islands and the West Coast, in the far North, where Mr To Han Hcnare's countrymen are already settling down to dairying, only needs subdivision and industrious scientific development to become as productive and as populous as tlie lands around (he base of Eginont are to-day. New markets are opening up, and Nov,- Zealand will not be .11 laid of over-production as long as the present excellent quality of tho goods is maintained.--T.vttolton Times