THE DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18265, 26 December 1924, Page 7

THE DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

N.Z. AND WISCONSIN

COMPARED.

j AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 1 Visitors to Christchurch during th° present sveok were Dr. 11. L- llusse , Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, College of Agriculture, Wisconsin Univereity, and Professor Theodore Macklin, Professor of Agricultural Economics i"n the same College. Tlicso American visitors have spent about two months in the Dom ion engaged chiefly in the investiga ion of the economics of t-hedaiijing lt * l,s try. They arrived in Christchurch on Tuesday evening and left last nig it ° r Wellington, whero they will complete their investigations by visiting the ai rarapa district- During their stay in tho Dominion they visited some of its scenic attractions, including tho W aitomo Caves, llotorua and Milford Sound. Dr. Russell, in tho course of an mtcr■view with a representative of ricss," saiU mat, u = l tllo North from what it'was' in be'hoS «nfh that stock ltao to ot- « u EStrarsggßg 01 the farmer was rrons for winter lecu. In tho sssarwsgag: Zealand dairy farmer to of pMuctjou »»S----iSer"\h °tiry f» had 1J sink thousands of dollars in barns an 111 Wisconsin, Dr. Russell went on to say was the dairy State of the Union. It possesses about 2J million dairy cattle; produces about ,oiper c of all the cheese made in the Unite States, 28 per cent, of the con^ milk, and about of all the butter: in addition it supplies a largo quantity of fluid milk to Chicago. in area the State of is about the same as either tho .North or South Island. "As far as production per acre is concerned," Dr. Russell said, are away ahead of us—you can gro more butter-fat owing to the conditions under which you operate; in the q of the cattle we are a little ahead—our average is 1901b of butter-fat per cow per annum; yours, I am told is about 1701b. That state of affairs mA\ lsconsin has been brought about by tho activities of the Cow-testing Associations —we have 180 odd of such Associations, that arc on the group system. . Your technical methods are far superior to ours. Your factories are in large units, and tho technical side, in general, is superior to ours. Your factory methods are standardised and, from the co-oper-ative point of view, you have made advances very much ahead of us. We have a large number of small units and they aro very difficult to bind together. I tliinK thatVe are doing more in feeding our cattle. On land valued at moi© than £4O an acre we don't feel thai we can safely engage in agriculture, exoept in special circumstances;: in New Zealand wo have seen dairying being carried on successfully on land valued at £6O, £BO, and £9O per acre." Asked regarding agricultural education, Dr. Russell said that every State had its Agricultural College, generally connected with the University, sometimes not. Agriculture was part and parcel of the educational just as much as mathematics, or the sciences or any other subject. The work of institution, experiment, research, and extension was all cbrrelated with the work of the Agricultural College as the University; in New Zealand the conduct of experiments and of extension /was mostly in the hands of the Department of Agriculture. In. the United States the Agricultural Colleges rested on a three-fold foundation—teaching, research, and extension —extension meaning the carrying to the man on the farm the results of research. Tho University of Wisconsin received from the State a little over £1,000,000 annually, and the Agricultural College got about £220,000 annually out of that amount. There were about 8000 students attending tho University, slightly under 1000 attending the Agricultural College, and there were 150 on the College staff engaged either in teaching, or research, or extension work. "We 6end our men anywhere that the problems to be solved necessitate," Dr Russell continued. "Last year we sent a man to the Argentine ; Professor Macklin has been to Canada and also to the States in the Union outside of Wisconsin, to study marketing problems. Generally, the University works in co-operation witli the United States Department of Agriculture, and combines its facilities wit'ithe Departments in these investigations. Professor Macklin; during our visit to the Dominion has been specially investigating the co-operative principle as applied to dairying." Professor Macklin, when asked regarding tlic general conclusions lis had arrived at, said that New Zealand was far ahead of Wisconsin in the matter of cn-nperative factories: the New Zealand factories wore, sneaking generally, nl'ont four, times as large as those in Wisconsin. Wlicro New Zealand lacked. lie thought, was in co-operntion and unification in regard to marketing in order to get the last cent out of the willing consumer.