N.Z. DAIRYING CRISIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 117, 20 May 1931, Page 19

N.Z. DAIRYING CRISIS.

A VISITOR'S IMPRESSIONS. "ONLY OURSELVES TO THANK." We have received the following sharply critical letter from Mrs. Margaret T. Harrison, N.D.D., B.D.F.A.D. Mrs. Harrison's sweeping condemnation of our produce and production methods will be read with surprise even by those who are disposed to be critical of our present system: — i- The present serious position in the dairying world must be causing much anxiety among the farming community, especially in the Waikato, where both cheese and butter are made. So much depends on the individual famer, and yet this is so often overlooked where mass production figures are considered. New Zealand is not enly losing over a million pounds yearly >with the difference between New Zealand and Canadian prices for cheese, but her butter industry is failing, and she has only herself to" thank for the serious crisis she now faces. Tooley Street has been the best friend New Zealand ever had. It put New Zealand on the map of the dairy produce world, and surely no one can say it has not tried to keep New Zealand there, as it warned you and pleaded with you to improve your methods. Tooley Street cannot keep you in the market if your products are not'acceptable to buyers in turn, and there is no use thinking that because it is made in New Zealand the British buying public will have it if it is not good quality. South Africa, not such a dairying country as this, is now producing good cheese. A New Zealand visitor at Home writes out about the wonderful quality of the "Cheddar" cheese, and a New Zealander the other day stated when Home that he was glad to revert to Danish butter after asking friends to trv New Zealand.

"You have gone mad on butterfat production and the Jersey cow. I am not connected with any farm or breed society, but I warn you dairy people that the most of your troubles to-day are due to the Jersey cows. In the race for yield and butterfat you have lost sight of the other contents in milk, absolute essentials for cheese and butter making. What is your cheese to-day? Greasy, slimy or intensely brittle, or leathery substance, bad keeping, bad flavoured, and in many instances deficient in the substance that is your downfall —fat. Jersey milk has large fat globules and is yellow in colour, both of which make it hard to handle, and at certain times excessively fat for cheese. There must be some nice prot>lems now in the Waikato over full cream cheese. Your butter is so much "treated" that it is really purified from all the things that give it flavour, and reaches the consumer as a. refined washed fat. For the big British market it is tasteless. unless by some chance it has developed objectionable flavours going Home, which, however, do not sell it. Look at the other countries that are beating you in the dairy produce world; what breed of cows are they handling? What class of milk are they producing? The answer will not ue Jersey, and those of you who have been steadily losing must face the question of breed before long. The white milk breeds are the essentials.

'"It seems easy to say that by removing some cream from the cheese milk you are getting a return for butter, but if you lose on your cheese price, what is the result ? There is not a cheese factory properly equipped to-day; your method of making is wrong; your curing is wrong; and your system of grading an absolute farce. One of the chief graders the other day in Southland in one part of his address upheld the grading, while in another part he had to admit there was something wrong. There must be something very far wrong when cheese that is highly graded here falls so lamentably behind the price for good quality on the London market. Meantime the dairy industry, the backbone of the country, is losing heavily. The loss turned into gain, even the difference between Canadian and New Zealand cheese prices, would mean all the difference between depression and despair and progress and prosperity.