BUTTER CONTROL

Feilding Star, Volume 4, Issue 676, 7 January 1926, Page 6

BUTTER CONTROL

THE MARKET IN AMERICA

HANDSOME PROFITS POSSIBLE

•‘While butterfat prices in New Zealand have slumped to Is 4d per lb., they have jumped to 3s oni the Pacific Coast of the United States, and with no immediate prospect oi a reduction. “Danish butter was on sale in Seattle,” said Mr Herman Seifert, a well known Manawatu farmer, who was there recently. “This country has set up a Dairy Control Board to look after the dairyman’s interests,” he said, “and to see that lie gets ‘the best prices obtainable for his butter. Some of the dairy farmers’ hard earned money lias been spent in sending ' delegations round the world to get first hand information, so that the dairyman might get better returns for his labour and capital. When I left London about three months .ago a second delegation had arrived there at the expense of the dairy farmer, I suppose, to look still deeper into butter prices with a view to assisting the hard-working eowspauker to earn a decent living. It does not look as if they have met with much success, as on landing back home I found that our butter market had collapsed :in <l factories were paying out round about Is 4d per lb. fo r butterfat. This came as a great surprise to me, because when 1 left the United States the butter market was booming and there was not the slightest indication of a set-back in price. As I only left there on December 2, it seems strange that some of our butter has not been sent there to relieve the London market. When I was in Seattle 1 last October I saw Danish butter advertised fo r sale, but not a single pound of New Zealand was in sight. It ;im?v well be "asked, what is our Control Board doing? WTiat is wrong with otlr buttci'? What is wrong with .our marketing ? Thero must be something wrong somewhere if Danish butter can find a. profitably market on. the Pacific seaboard of the United States, and wo.

with a direct subsidised steamer s,orvico to San Francisco and Vancouver, cannot find a market there at all.”