DAIRY INDUSTRY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 April 1925, Page 7

DAIRY INDUSTRY.

NEW ZEALAND’S EXAMPLE. COMMENDED TO U.S.A. FARMERS KEYNOTES OF SUCCESS. Professor Theo. Macklin, of the University ot Wisconsin, holds vip New Zealand dairy fanners as an example to their American cousins. In addressing the eleventh annual meeting of the Feneration of Cheese Producers, at Plymouth, Wisconsin, lie explained that .New Zealand is 12(A) miles east of Australia, composed or three little islands, away out in the Pacific, the total area of which is a little less than twice the area ot Wisconsin. “What tve are trying to get at is how have -iS,OGJ farmers in this little country suuuh of the equator developed a cooperative marketing system lor butter and cheese;-' What can we learn by experience from New Zealand wliicn we might apply in Wisconsin?” fhe country is rough and hilly, continued Professor Macklm. lucre is land that runs up to 12,060 reet. The Highest in Wisconsin is 201) feet. “it we have it rough, they have it ten times as rough. On y or New Zealand, 43,000,O(K) acres, is m farms.’ Tne average dairy lann is about 162 acres, about the same as Wisconsin. Only one-seven ill is used tor dairying, the reason being that New Zealand oeing a mountainous country the dairy farms are down in the bottom lands and river valleys. Tney pasture men cows all the year round. Their feed is home-grown. They have a consider-abl-e ladvanibage ever ties in the nua.tter of'producdug feed and tinning it into dairy .products. There is another difference. They 'live in a.mild dimate. In their house;* they do not even have furnaces. They do not have barns, and if a cold snap comes they blanket their cows. New Zealand' has 515 dairy factories. Of that number 155 are butter factories, 295 are cheese factories, ami the rest are factories' (about 75) that make so much cheese, 800,6001 b per factory, that they can skim their whey and make their own, jutter. Conditions in their factories aie very different from ours. Back in 18S0 they had not more than five private dairy factories. In 1881 the first co-operative factories (two) were started. In 1893 there weie 100 factories, 45 per cent, co-operative. In 1924 89.5 per cent, were co-operative. They were managed by fanners who employ business man-agers-who hire cheeseiiiiakers. It gives the cheesemakers a square deal, also the farmers. Wisconsin co-operatives fall down on hiring business managers. New Zealand co-operative® are managed by the. best business genius in New Zealand—Mr. William Good fellow, added Professor Macklin. The federation does :a. 5.500,000 dollars business. The organisation in New Zealand is just four times as big and has one-half as many dairy crows, as Wisconsin. ' KEYNOTES OF SUCCESS.

The keynotes of the success of the New Zealand co-operatives aie : 1. They grade every gallon of milk received at. ia. factory when received. The system in Wisconsin is giving dairy farmers 100 per cent. for the rottenest milk turned into a cheese factory. 2. They pay for quality. They will nob buy one pound of milk that is ungraded ; then they pay on the basis of quality. 3. Management. No co-operative enterprise can run in competition with private business without following business principles. There is going to be no real co-operative success in Wisconsin until you hire the other fellow’s best help. NEW ZEALAND’S MARKETING SYSTEM. The Government has a grading system, started in 1892. They .pat grading marks on all products. The system has developed to such an extent that .the merchants in London buy by Government grades instead of inspection. If si wholesaler js selling more cheese and getting better prices than another, they give him eliee.se in preference to the other. Thus the wholesalers are competing against each other to get the’cheese. About two years ago, after ten years of effort, the dairymen of New Zealand got the Government to pass a law. 'The resolution as drawn up by them was somewhat as follows: “Whereas for ten years private competition has refused to grade and pay for quality, let us go together and by one unified sales system sta’mp out these evils.” A council, composed of lime representatives of the dairy industry, two Government appointees, and one private middleman, is devising the system. “These men travelled through Wisconsin recently. Then went back on the ship on which Dean Russel] and 1 went to New Zealand,” remarked Professor Macklin. “Just to prove how conservative they are- —one of them was in the same cabin with us, and it was fourteen days before we got acquainted with him. These men will not take any steps that they will have to retrace.” WISCN INSI.N SYSTEM. The Cheese federation was the great, est foundation the State had got for co-operation, “but a foundation is not a bouse,” said the professor. “You can freeze to death lying on a foundation. You can be blown away by every wind that comes along. You have to put a well-rounded business system in. You have an unexcelled organisation as far as it goes. There is no business in the State that is handled in a more demoralised way than the cheese business of Wisconsin. The cheese federation has built a foundation. It' has some of the finest men in the State in it. Why do you not bring it out? Build it up? Meet opposition with facts? Make these false stories bury themselves with lac-k of enthusiasm oi chuck them out" of the way? Your factories are one-third of the size they ought to be. You have men in them that you are trying to make business? men when they are only cheesemakers. You ought to have factories that pay a cheesemaker decent wages. “Your competitors are running away with you because the farmers of the State do not appreciate business. The directors cannot do what you will not let them do. This is a democratic inistitntion. and it is up to each one of | :u to see that it succeeds.”