DAIRY INDUSTRY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 December 1924, Page 7

DAIRY INDUSTRY.

IN THE ARGENTINE. Mr. C. E. Robertson, who has just reumed from a visit to South America, informed a Dominion representative that at the time of his visit the Argentine was steadily recovering from the slump, or, as it was termed there, the “crisis,” and as prices for beef had advanced considerably, and new markets were opening up on the European Continent, the country was looking forward to a period of prosperity. During the crisis, dairying had been turned to as a more profitable system of farming than cattle raising and fattening, but owing to the improved position of the beef market, and the really unsatisfactory labour for this technical olass of farming, Mr. Robertson .said he was of the opinion that no great advance would be made in dairying for some years to come. Up to the present the co-operative factory system bad not been a success, hut there were some huge proprietary concerns which engaged in the producing as well as in the manufacturing business. One of these concerns milked on one property 7000 head of Friesian cattle, and another (founded by Mr. Reynolds, formerly of Cambridge, New Zealand), milked on its properties, nearly 14,000 dairy Shorthorns. Machine milking was not practised, and the cows were only milked once a day. the calves running with the cows. The country was an amazingly rich agricultural one, and there were many very large concerns working huge tracts of land. One company, for example, ran 1,200,000 sheer), the largest cattle breeder owned 200,000 breeding cows, and quite a number of the Shorthorn breeders bred and sold 1000 bulls and over a year; one pig breeder bred and fattened 12,000 pigs annually. Lines of one-brand steers fat at 2 years and 9 months had been sold bv one breeder in successive years in drafts of 10,200 and 12,500. The Shortborn cattle were the finest in the world, but the dairy cattle and sheep could be vastly improved upon. The prospects of improving the trade in New Zealand sheep were excellent, and in time there would be a demand for dairy cattle. Stock of a high standard were required, and' in their own interests the breed societies would require to insist upon their inspectors passing nothing for export exeept stock of a really creditable class. Quite a number of shipments of rough-looking sheen bad been made, and bad called forth severe criticism. The market renuired quality from New Zealand. English. breeder bad loaded the market with the other kind —in fact, at a joint “•vie of English Romnevs and following on the exhibition, not a single bid was forth com ing. " After spending two months in South America. Mr. Robertson proceeded to the United States and Canada, and while there -attended the National Horse Miow at New York, and the Pacific Tntornational Live Stock Exposition at Portland.