Beet Culture

Horowhenua Chronicle, 28 September 1910, Page 4

Beet Culture

THE LEVIN MOVEMENT

The Now Zealand Times comments as follows:—

" The endeavours being inado in the Levin district to establish beetgrow (fo'r sugar production) and linseed growing aire, it is to be feared, hardly likely to secure attainment of their objective. The prime movers cannot surely have investigated these phases of rural activity. Even if there was a sufficient area of suitable land in the district to provide material in the necessary quantity to warrant the establishment of a sugar beet factory there are othei rural industries which present much more remunerative returns, and the same applies to linseed production. What tho district needs is a morerapid extension of closer settlement and ecouragement to the smaller industries and petite culture. The business of milk production is callable of groat expansion, not so much from tho view-point of increasing the numbeir of dairy farms but mo-re in the direction of raising the standard of tilie dairy herd, both by the use of hotter bulls and the culling out of the unprofitable cows, while more could be done in the care and feeding of the stock. Public-spirited men in Levin would more effectively advance the interests of the district by assisting in the establishing of herd-testing associations, and, in conjunction with the dairy companies operating in the district, offer substantial prizes for tiie best-man-aged dairy farms. More could be done in the encouragement of fruitgrowing and poultry farming. Levin would be a capital centre fo'r a little co-operative company which would collect, grade and market the produce of members on the most approved principles. It could not only grade fruit and create a market for the higher class product, but could take up the fattening of poultry, collecting the store birds of members (possibly by the agency of the dairy companies, the I'armer.s bringing their birds to the -factory with the milk and the co-operative marketing company there taking delivery of the birds) and cramming them for the Wellington market, collecting eggs in the same fnanner. Few people realise the money in properly primed off and well-dressed table birds marketed direct to the hotels, clubs, shipping, and leading caterers of Wellington. True, a cooperative poultry c-omnany was established and failed in Lovin, but this is a common incident in the history of co-operation. Failures were many in the early days of co-opera-tive dairying, especially in the Auckland province. Tilie Levin district is too good for beet and linseed production, but is a favoured location (with the best market in the dominion at its door) tor the small cultivator, the dairyman, the fruitgrower, and the poultrvmnn. All that is needed is moresmall allotments the right class of settler, and organisation—a. method of collecting which has hitherto not been attempted in this countrv. Tn this work the public men of Levin have a rich field for their energy and push."