MILK MARKETING

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 135, 5 December 1933, Page 7

MILK MARKETING

F*RM CHEESE SUFFERS j

INDUSTRY AfcMOST^OEiMM (From "The Posfs": Rtpreienttthffcjf 1 LONDON, October '-27* ; According to the "Daily Express* agricultural correspondent the farm cheese-making industry throughout Great Britain is in the'worst■'conditions it has ever known.

la Cheshire, which-normally is re* sponsible for supplying two-thirds of home-produced cheese, .the industry is, practically dead. By ■withholding from farmers advantages which it gives to cheese manufacturers, the milk marketing scheme' is forcing farm cheesemakers out of business and turning their milk on to the market for sale !for liquid consumption. In Somerset,. Wiltshire, and Dorset' more than five hundred farmers have given up cheese-making, and their employees, who averaged three to ft farm, have been thrown out of w^c. Mr. J. P. Broughton, of South Petto} eiton, said that in Somerset alone .the farmers produced 50,000 gallons -of milk a day, most of which they used to turn, into cheese. "We got Bd-a pound," he said. "Under the milk; scheme we shall get no compensation for milk made into cheese, so we have given up the business. The cheese industry will be dead in three months. There are factories for making cheese, but the fame of our counties' jwo^iee was built on the cheese made in thej farmer's own dairy." Production in Lancashire h&s.fallefl? ■by half during the past month. In; Wensleydale 60 per cent, of the cheese* makers have abandoned the industry.

In Cheshire it is expected that mor»' than 5000 people will be affected by tnej cessation of the cheese-making business. The county federation recently took a census of its members, and' found that 1350 (about 90 per cent.),' employing more than 4000 people, had1 left the business since the milk scheme? came into operation. ■

I One of them is Mr. T. C. Goodwin, the chairman. He himself produced an average of thirty tons a year. He has a hord of 110 milking cows, and a large • number of pigs, which he waa able to feed with the whey from his cheese-making.

"The marketing scheme, will be wrecked unless provision is »Ste dy the cheese-makers before the new contracts are negotiated at the end of March," he said. "With the cheese industry ruined there will bo a tremendous flood of milk on the market."

Mr. AY. H. Hobson, a, cheese-maker of Nantwich, expressed the opinion that unless the Government took steps to help the cheese-makers the milk scheme would be dead by this time next year.

"The worst of it is," he added,..<'tfofi cheese industry will be stone dead, t00,," ;

Those statements, no doubt, »*•» meant primarily to hasten action.onth* part of the Government and the^Mißfr. Irlarketing'&BoaroV ' "'""