A FARMER'S QUESTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 380, 28 April 1881, Page 3

A FARMER'S QUESTION.

The following review from the Melbourne Leader of a paper read at a Farmers' Club at Ballarat will be of some importance to the farmers :—" On a well conducted farm the minor and varied products amount in the aggregate to a substantial sum at the end of the year. Root growing, particularly the cultivation of sugar-beet, does not rpceive the attention it deserves from our farmers, and were they to direct their combined influence in the proper direction, distillation from locally grown beet might soon be largely carried on in the colony. The local market for beet sugar is practically unlimited. Take the item of malt aleo and we find that although large areas of Victoria are adapted for the production of the best qualities of malting barley, yet the producers are compelled to accept a low price for grain. Up<m every busliel pf barley 3s 6d is made by the malster, and his profit, we have shown on previous occasions, might be secured by sbe farmers themselves, if they chose to form co- operative malting barns in their districts. Then as to the important question of brewing from malt instead pt sugar, 4 what, it may be asked,'are the farmers about that they do not utilise their Unions s>o as to break up the great monopoly which prejudices their interests in this connection ? Mr Stevenson, in his lecture, asserts t'.at f' the brewer makes 12s 6d out of what barley the farmer sells him for 25." It is thus easily perceived that sugar in a very much greater degree than malt is used by our brewers and distillers. The farmers bj legitimately using their combined influence, have it in their power to prohibit the use of sugar in compelling the use of malt. "The use of sugar in brewing is tabooed in England, and why should it be permitted }}ere ! The use of malt would ensure to the public a conaeleterious article ot consumption, compared with what is supplied at present and would remedy the Ipw j rices of barley which the present over supply has caused.