THE PRICE OF MILK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVIII, Issue 18412, 19 May 1920, Page 7

THE PRICE OF MILK.

T!l THK EDITOR. r Sir,—ln my letter of May Cit would have been clearer if I had made the concluding lines read " ensure" ; fiveponce a quart instead of "make." I did not, of course, mean fivepenc© a quart profit in the distribution. We all know that the cost of coal to tho consumer is many times its cost at tho pit, owing to railway costs at both ends, wharf labour at both ends, freight cartage to coal yard and so on through all the many stages of transport and distribution. The milk problem, however, is much simpler. The farmer can make a fair profii at about a shilling a gallon, provided the milk is taken from his farm. By "farmer" I do not mean a suburban owner of a small plot of land costing, say, £l6O an acre. On n o per cent basis this works out as rent, or interest, at £8 an acre. I mean, rather, the farmer oh the outer area of land worth about £7O an acre downwards. In tho absence of municipally-owned farms, would it pay Christchurch to undertake on a large scale the distribution of milk? And could it not bo distributed at onethird the cost of production? These are the questions to be solved, in the interests of many thousands of workers, their children, who ought to have an abundant reasonably cheap and wholesome supply of milk, and lastly of the milk suppliers themselves, who, under a great municipal control system, would have a safer guarantee of permanency and pay.—-! am, etc..

F. J. ALLEY.