Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922. “TOO MUCH DAIRYING”

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 432, 24 June 1922, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922. “TOO MUCH DAIRYING”

The United States Consul-General, who has been offering some sound advice to business people in Wellington and elsewhere, particularly in regard to the opening up of the American markets lor our surplus products, is apparently ot the opinion that our New Zealand 1 armors are paying too much attention to the dairying industry and neglecting other and equally profitable brandies of agriculture, Certainly the grain exports are almost negligible in quantity, and it is probable they could he extended with benefit in times such as these, when there is a world shortage of such commodities. Tor the most part our pastoral exports are confined to wool, frozen meal, butler, cheese, tallow, hides and skins, which tor the year ]920 amounted in value to nearly forty millions sterling, wool and frozen meat accounting for some twenty-three and a halt millions, while the dairy products (butter and cheese) accounted fur another nine millions, whereas the value of ail our agricultural exports lor the same year was only little more than half a million. If Mr Wilbur had been longer acquainted with farming conditions in New Zealand he would probably have recognised that our tanners are concentrating upon the more payable linos of tanning, and that their operations are largely guided by flic co-operative enterprises they have established, in the shape of dairy factories and creameries, the butter and cheese products from which have become more and more extensive during the last ten years. In 1911 the total exports of butter and cheese from this Dominion were valued at £'2,768,974. In 1920 they reached a total value of £9,183,175, and last year (that is the calendar year of 1921) that value was more than doubled, 898,478 cwt. of butter, valued at £11,169,530, and 1,368,786 cwt. of cheese, of the value of £8,199,183, being exported. Dairying was the one profitable branch of farming enterprises last year, returning, in export values, nineteen and a quarter millions, against £5,221.479 for wool and £10,996,770 for frozen meat. The dairy farmer saved the situation financially from a position bordering upon bankruptcy. The position this year does not appear to be quite so good, the latest returns showing a distinct falling off in values, although the production is greater, the*figures lor the nine months of 1921-22 showing that 1,192,075 cwt. of butter and 894.573 cwt. of choose were received into grading store, against 1,059,183 cwt. of butter and 643,991 cwt. of cheese received during the same months of 1920-21. It is perhaps as well that attention should lie drawn to the necessity of extending the products of the farm in other directions. We ought not, for instance, to have to import a single bushel of wheat, yet often we do not grow enough for our own requirements, and, while wheat-growing is a more expensive business here than it is in Australia, it is still a profitable enough undertaking _to bo taken in hand far more extensively than it is at present, and, after all. it is not the .(cme of wisdom for anyone (to use a somewhat hackneyed expression) to earrv all one’s eggs in the one basket. There is certainly room for a good deal more cropping and grain growing in the Dominion than is being taken in hand at present.