City Milk Supply

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 247, 16 July 1935, Page 11

City Milk Supply

Sir, —Councillor Bennett’s statement in your issue of July 5 indicates that some milk suppliers are not getting a fair deal from the Wellington Dairy Farmers’ Association. His statement that they received little or no surplus from the Dairy Farmers’ Association in May puts the onus on the association to show why so many farmers had more than half their milk “surplus” during that month. There is evidently a screw loose somewhere.

I submit my May returns to you, sir,- to verify my statement that nearly 3-sths of the May milk is paid for as surplus at the rate of Bd. lb. butterfat, or 3 3-sd. per gallon for the milk, and that the whole of this milk is delivered to the Wellington City Milk Supply. You will gee also that the gross return for the whole of May milk averaged 7Jd. per gallon. The City Council has a duty to citizens beyond that of making money out of them. They were once called “City Fathers,” but the Milk Department’s concern appears to be to build up its palatial establishment and reserves. Mr. G. M. Henderson, in an excellent letter in your paper of to-days’ date on malnutrition, quotes Dr. Ada Paterson as having stated that with few exceptions every child needed from 1 to 14 pints of milk daily. If the City Council was really" doing its job it would see that the children got the milk at a reasonable price instead of turning it into butter at 3 3-sd. per gallon for the milk. The world produces'no better food than milk for children. All that is necessary to build bone and flesh and health is in milk, yet while thousands of people in this city to-day cannot buy enough for their needs _ at l/10d. per gallon, we are making it into butter at less than 4d.

There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when the price of butter will be greatly increased, and the Milk Department will have to pay a reasonable price to the impoverished farmers. Then on account of the huge cost in overhead of the city's services, milk will bedear indeed to citv consumers.

I am quite sure that every milk producer would be glad to see some comprehensive scheme to supply the poor with milk which would absorb all the milk produced in the area, and would accept a much lower price from the City Council, providing it also was willing to reduce its cost in keeping with the fact that it is supposed to be the guardian of citizens, that it is a children’s food it is dealing in, and that poverty is a lodger in thousands of homes.

Farmers are selling milk in winter at 3 5-Bd, per gallon to be made into butter on the one hand, and there are thousands of poor people who cannot buy this milk at less than 1/10 on the other. No councillor Bennett, the -whole business reflects little credit on the council or the Milk Department. —I am, etc., JOHN SMITH.

Wellington, July 12. [The correspondent’s statement from the Wellington Dairy Farmers’, Co-op. Association Ltd., for May was enclosed with the above letter. The figures are as stated.] ■