THE FARMER'S SUSPICIONS.

Hawera Star, Volume L, 20 February 1931, Page 6

THE FARMER'S SUSPICIONS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir Might I encroach upon your valuable space to give my opinion, and I think I voice the opinion of the whole of the dairying industry when I say that we have a right to be suspicious when perfect strangers como miles just to tell us what they think of us and our dairy produce. Of course, we wonder what they are getting out of it; we all know that there are a number of butter buyers around just now, trying to purchase our butter and cheese at the low figure it is now quoted at and offering to buy our whole season's output. One or two factories have dropped tlieiv cheese and already they arc shipping the cat because they have sold too cheap. We are paying for our laboratorv and scientist, so have a perfect right to object to our laboratory being used as a means for slumping our produce. Again ,there is an agitation to appoint another “Dictator. They have 011 cin the Waikato. That one in my opinion, is one of the bigKost causes of the present slump in dairy produce in New Zealand, by' tryjn.<r "to take the business out of the hands of the big combines in Toolcy Street, who have chain stores the length and breadth of Great Britain. Long-established firms used to send their buyers to New Zealand in search of our produce until we started to hawk it ourselves, under the Waikato dictator's rule, and we used to get on verv well with our directors selling our butter and cheese to these buyers, who competed one with the other for our goods. Our factory managers in those days made good cheese and could do so again if we could get rid of half our scientists and control boards and all the frv that follow these people. We voted for the Control Board certainly, thinking we wore getting a real live wire into the dairy business, but we have just succeeded in getting a lot of lnghiv paid officials without getting the service we put them there to giv, and it seems so very difficult getting lid of them that who will wonder why we have lost confidence and suspect any' fresh scheme of being just another means of foisting on to our industry another useless blunderer with big pay. 1 understand it was the idea of the scientists we employ to standardise oui cheese, also to wax our cheese. Now cheese is ail article of food that should get time to ripen or mature, but to wa.x a freshlv-niade cheese is to exclude the air and'light, but, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,'' so the less said about vaxed cheese the letter. Now in one of the letters or articles someone said that there isn't one graduate from a university, from Mr Singleton downwards, in the dairy industry. But is this necessary to make good butter or cheese? The best butter and cheese is made by dairymaids. Some of them hardly went to school at all ,and, as an old friend of iny own says, “You cannot make brains or educate brains into anyone. ’ ’ If you look around you you will see that the people who do the great things in the world are not men who have taken a university degree. Of course to, be a scientist one would have to be trained, but that training does not of necessity' give them brains, as we all know. Would it not be much better for our scientists to make both cheese and butter themselves and try out their experiments on this stuff before they start ordering our factory managers, who were already . making both good butter and cheese, to standardise all the cheese or to wax . all the cheese or the hundred and one things they' want to try out. It would . not be such a big loss to the industry if their new methods turned out a big | mistake, and if they' make a success of , their experiments we could make them , professors or raise their salary.—l am, ( etc., 1 H. HOGG. Manaia. (On the subject of Mr V calc's al- l leged responsibility for the introduc- I tion of standardisation, we would refer ; our correspondent to the issues of the 1 “Star" of August 31st, 1928, Sep tern- : ber Ist, 1928, and also to the scientist's t report to the annual meeting of the Federation held in December, 1930. i Standardisation was a scheme sub- < niitted to the industry by the Director of the Division. —Ed. “Star."]