POWER ON THE FARM.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1921, Page 5

POWER ON THE FARM.

ELECTRICITY FOR DAIRYING. HALF COST OF BENZINE. The effect of a supply of electricity on the agricultural and dairying industries of New Zealand is placed nigh in importance by Mr. L. Birks, chief electrical engineer. In an address to the Rotary Club, Wellington, last week, Mr. Birks said that urgent demand for electric power at present comes from the Waikato and Hauraki Plains for operating milking machines. There are 34 006 milk suppliers in New Zealand, and the number is increasing at rhe rate of 10 per cent, per year. Of these 8800 used milking machines in 1919, practically all driven by 3 h.p. petrol or kerosene engines, and this number is increasing at the rate of 16 per cent, per year. The 2 h.p electric motor, which is sufficient for dairy farm purposes, has about one-half the first cost and less than one-half the running cost of the corresponding pct rol or kerosene engine, and is safer, steadier, and more reliable. The cost of electricity ranges from £2l to £3O per year, as compared with the cost of .30 to 50 cases of benzine—worth at the farm a great deal more than ir costs to ray in Wellington. The advantage is so marked that several eases have occurred in which the electric motor was the deciding factor in changing over the farm from agriculture to dairying. Southland for some time has been losing its rural population, who are migrating to the milder climate of the North Island, continued Mr. Birks. Their ambitious electric power reherne from Lake Monowai, with its 1700 miles of distribution lines io every farm in the whole province, has been conceived with one main object—to hold the population and attract it back again by offering the economies, conveniences, and comforts of electric power on the farm. And although the present financial depression has resulted in a check to their development in common with many »ther developments, Mr. Birks said he has no doubt that Mr. Rodgers’ idealism will be fully justified in the early future by results.