FAT LAMBS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1938, Page 3

FAT LAMBS

LESSONS FROM DOMINION PRODUCTION. ENGLISH AGRICULTURALIST'S VIEWS. Among many subjects of “direct application” that would bear investigation at the present time one strikes me as of special importance (says an English agricultural writer). How is it that the New Zealand farmer can send his lamb over thousands of miles of sea and sell it here at 8d a lb., while we are hard hit when, as now, our price has dropped to Is? Currency depreciation may have something to do with it, but is not the whole explanation. For £lOO worth of lamb sold in London the New Zealand farmer receives £125 and the same ratio applies to wool, but there is still the long freight. A typical New Zealand farm may be all in grass and most of the country seems to enjoy a “double-seasoned” year, grass growth being about equally vigorous in spring and autumn. Even so, they produce only one crop of lambs per annum just as we do and on well-managed farms we have no difficulty in carrying the ewe flock cheaply over the winter on grass. Can we bring our cost of production more nearly into line with that which seems to satisfy the New Zealand farmer? If not, can we expect the consumer, so long accustomed to the excellent New Zealand product, to forego this cheap supply in our favour? With all the grassland at our disposal I am sure we could be self-supporting in mutton and lamb, but if we are to increase production we must first explore ways and means of reducing costs, and I suggest this would be a useful job for co-operative research. DOGS AND TRACTORS. In my search for reasons why the New Zealand pastoralist can afford to undersell the British sheep farmer in our home market I have come across some interesting bits of information. Of 43 million acres of occupied land in that Dominion 94 per cent is grass. Sixty-eight per cent of this area is devoted exclusively to sheep and a further 11 per cent to mixed agricultural or dairy farming along with sheep. Furthermore, 68 per cent of the occupied land is held in areas of over 1,000 acres. In this kind of farming man-power is reduced to a minimum and wages "do not press heavily 'on the enterprise. It is dogs and riding horses rather than men. We, too, shall have to train more dogs, since, apparently, labour is no longer forthcoming for food production. Dogs for farming grassland and tractors for arable is what things are coming to. And 1J millions of people are unemployed. In this connection it is worth noting that the New Zealand Government subsidises farmers willing to train inexperienced youths between 18 and 21 years of age. Weekly cash wages payable by farmers are: 18 to 19, 27s 6d (subsidy to farmer, 10s); 19 to 20, 32s 6d (subsidy to farmer, 12s 6d); 20 to 21, 37s 6d (subsidy to farmer, 15s). Surely an experiment on these lines would also be worth trying here?