THE FARMERS' COLUMN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 92, 2 March 1881, Page 4

THE FARMERS' COLUMN.

HOME DEMAND FOR OATS.

Somb few days since, we took occasion to allude, in our leading columns, to an extract, from the Bruce Herald, in reference to the demand for oats in the United Kingdom. Since the article in question appeared, we have received further information from a private source on the matter. It seems that tne person alluded to in the Bruce Herald was not sent to New Zealand by any Glasgow firm, but was himself the head of the largest Glasgow importing house, and came to New Zealand, in the main, for the benefit of his health, but also to do business vith any Home friends. How the informant of the Bruce Herald fixed the value of the oatmeal required for the Glasgow market at £160,000, is a mystery. That sum represents about 15,000 tons of meal. The returns from New Zealand last year showed that 20,000 tons had been grown in the colony, so that no special effort on the part of farmers would be required to supply the demand if it was limited to 15,000 tons. It is a fact which may be of very great interest to our farmers to be made aware of

that the supply of home grown oatmeal in Scotland is notoriously insufficient to meet the demand, and that for five or six years past very large supplies have had to be imported from America. The millers in Scotland obtain their oats at a far greater disadvantage than do those in New Zealand, and yet they make it pay. We may mention here that our informant has travelled over almost every part of the known world which supplies the Home markets with grain, and gives it as his opinion that New Zealand is the only place where the quality of oatmeal required at Home can be obtained from. We shall be understating the amount when we say that the sum of in hard cash goes from Scotland to America every year to buy oatmeal. Every penny of this amount should come to New Zealand. It the people of this colony only knew their own advantages, and how eagerly the Old Country merchants would buy what is here for sale, the state of matters at present in existence would not last long. The fact is we are too -well off altogether. Had we not such a salubrious climate and such a fertile soil, we should exercise our wits and energies more in finding markets for our produce. Sooner or later, though, we shall have to put our shoulder to the wheel and shake off our lethargy. As colonists, we are a go-ahead people, but there is little doubt that the colony makes us go, and not we the colony. In other words, we cannot very well help progressing so long as the resources of our adopted country are but on the eve of being developed. We have only to tickle the land to make it bear good fruit. — Geraldine County Chronicle.