PIFFLE ABOUT DOMINION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 299, 29 September 1938, Page 8

PIFFLE ABOUT DOMINION.

STATEMENTS MADE OVERSEAS. A recent visitor from Australia to New Zealand, on his return told a meeting of local farmers that the dairy herds in New Zealand averaged 3201 b of butterfat, that their main fodder was ryegrass and ensilage from silos mostly cut into the sides of hills. The value of dairy farms was in the vicinity of €6O per acre and the Jetting value* €3. The soil was mostly pumice and the farmers used 3ewt of super per acre annually. The above remarks may probably apply to a limited area in the North Island, but readers of the speech are not aware of this. There is certainly no district in the South island where such conditions exist, yet such statements are exactly on a par with that of contributors I rom Auckland to several Rritish farming papers. Here, for instance, is what appeared in the “Scottish Farmer’’ some time ago from an ‘Auckland correspondent: •‘.Meat is extraordinarily dear, and the reject export stall’ we usually get here is about as tough and as stringy* as leather—the finest quality of meat being all exported. The only tender hit of meat one is sure of getting in Auckland city is reject export lamb at Is a lb upwards.” Commenting on cheese, he says that since the advent of the Jersey cow, quality has lowered, also that the Jersey, the predominant dairy breed in the country, is really the bugbear of the New Zealand dairy farmer. Those men of the far north write of

conditions unheard ol in the south, and no exception could be taken to this, only that they write as if their remarks embraced the whole of New Zealand. The average Aucklander, when referring to the great, province he resides in ignores the fact that other districts exist, and will never admit that there is anything worth seeing south of Cook Strait. Some of the letters which appear in British papers about New Zealand are simply “pilfle” yet the knowledge of the average Britisher about this Dominion is so meagre that it is swallowed for solid facts.