ADVANTAGES OF MIXED FARMING

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 304, 8 December 1931, Page 10

ADVANTAGES OF MIXED FARMING

IN TIMES OF DEPRESSION. During a period of depression in the agricultural and pastoral industries, dairying has proved to be the mainstay of thousands of landowners, comments the “Australasian.” Wheatgrowers, graziers, and sheep farmers, whose resources have been depleted by a series of unfavourable years and low prices for produce, have turned to dairy farming as a means of tiding them over a Lan period. So great has bee: a increase in dairy farming that some uneasiness has been caused regarding the possibility of over-produc-tion. However, before there can bo any great increase in production it is necessary first to breed up suitable dairy slock, hence the increase iu production must be gradual. On the other hand, cereal production may be enormously increased in one year under favourable climatic conditions simply by cropping a greater acreage. Sheep and pig population may also be raised at a more rapid rate than that of dairy stock. It is improbable, therefore, that the fresh impetus given to dairy farming will lead to econo, -ie or marketing difficulties. Farmers are being driven to a realisation that mixed farming offers a greater prospect of success than more specialised branches, such as wheatgrowing, liny production, potato-grow-irg. f:.t raising or wool-growing.

Dairying fits in admirably well with with any of these activities. The fortnightly milk or cream cheque has saved manv - struggling settler from financial embarrassment. Upon many of the sheep and wheat farms a few cows, tended by the farmer’s family, have provided the whole of the living expenses, leaving the returns from other branches to be applied to the reduction of mortgage, the payment of interest, or fresh developmental work. The food value of the dairy produce, together with the profitable utilisation of surplus skim milk for pig or poultry raising, and augmenting the meat supply by growing one or two vealers during the year, would reduce considerably the cost of living, thereby husbanding the slender monetary resources of the settler.