PIG PRODUCTION

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3183, 6 September 1917, Page 8

PIG PRODUCTION

There is a pronoiinced falling-oft in. pig production in North Canterbury. Farmers who used "to raiee and fatten hundreds of pigs a year bow raise but a handful, and some do not even raiae enougJi for tho home consumption of bacon. Many reasons are assigned. /First,of all there has beon.an absence during tho dry years of. clover and poas on the farm for growing and fattening, and it has not beoa possiblo to buy either pig'meals, bran, or pollard at reasonable rates and in decent quantities. : And on tho l top of all this is the fact that in this period of farm prosperity tho lowly pig is not considered an ossential to success. Pig-raising on commercial lines, howevor, by men who are • prepared todevote attention to breodinj anof feeding for early profit has big possibilities." ... A Christchurch merchant is firmly of opinion that there has been a go<xl deal of illegal selling of wheat in Canterbin-y this season, says a Christchurch exchange. One farmer, ho said, was heard to boast that he had sold a lino of Pearl at eightpence a bushel ahead of the Government maximum price. .Instauces are frequently quoted of sellers ».udeavouring to persuade merchants to give an advanced price," by methods unexplained, and. the fact that the agent who refused to operate in this way was given no second offer of the wheat, and that it was subsequently eold, caused, a suspicion that things were not all that they should be. A grower of wheat and oats might offer tho wheat at tho fixed price, but rofuso to tako current rates for his oats. From Otago come stenes of silk dresses given to' farmers' wives to encourage tho grower to part with his produce. These stories, of course, are hard to prove, but their very persistence in mercantile circles is suggestive.