WORLD’S LIVE STOCK INCREASE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 72, 8 March 1930, Page 10

WORLD’S LIVE STOCK INCREASE

EMPIRE’S LARGE SHARE. During the last few years the domestic livestock population of the world has increased, an apparently reliable estimate giving the present totals as 585,000,000 cattle, 525,000,000 sheep and 100,000,000 goats. (The goats show a small decline.) Some 40 to 50 per cent, of the cattle and sheep, and nearly all the goats, are raised within the Empire, which, regarded as a unit, is by far the largest producer of liv stock in the world. A somewhat curious fact is that while the live-stock population of the world has grown, there has not beoj a proportionate increase in the production of hides and skins, which appear to have been in smaller supply, particularly cattle hides. Indeed, in the period betwen the summer of 1927 and the spring of 1928, there was such a shortage of hides that prices advanced by 50 per cent., although there was no exceptional demand for leather at that time. Various reasons have ben advanced for the apparent shortage of hides. It has been said that the meat-eating nations are eating less meat than formerly, and consequently there is n smaller slaughter of cattle. Another explanation is that great depletions of stock took place during the war, and for some years afterwards very little was done in the way of replenishment; now, it is asserted, breeders are building up their stocks again, and are encouraged to do so because the prices they have been receiving for their cattle have not been very attractive.