GROWTH OF DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

Northern Advocate, 9 December 1910, Page 4

GROWTH OF DAIRYING INDUSTRY.

WE were enabled yesterday to supply some very gratifying statistics relative to the abnormal advance made by the local Co-operative Dairy Company. More pleasing still is the knowledge that this is but a parallel illustration of the dairy industry's growth at all the other factory centres in the "YVhangarei district, and, indeed, throughout the whole Dominion. The development of butter and cheese-making since 1892, and its export abroad, made possible by the refrigerator, has been so extensive and successful that the relation of it sounds almost like a romance. An officer of the last Conservative Administration reported in 1888 ' (six years after the export of frozen meat was commenced) "that the" effect ;I of freezing on butter and cheese was ruinous to both." Four years later the Ballance Government established the Department of Agriculture. Experts were subsequently engaged to instruct and otherwise help farmers to make good butter and cheese and to make money by its sale. This, of course, was,.-and is, but a fraction of the work of the department's officers, but it is a branch of their activities which has had direct traceable results of benefit and value to settlers, and, indirectly, the whole community. The work of this department did not immediately meet with universal approval. There were necessarily certain directions in which compulsion had to be introduced, and compulsion always finds opponents, especially among those it is designed to most benefit. In 1895 there Avas considerable unfavorable criticism when Parliament decided that all butter for export must be graded by Government experts. However, the wisdom of this course was soon manifested in the advantageous position our. butter began to occupy on the London market. Five jears latar the principle was also adopted in respect of cheese. The system operates beneficially in two ways. It compels the producer to keep his product up to standard, and the grade-notes accompanying the butter and cheese to the world's markets, being accepted as an official "Hall-mark" of quality, give it an added value which finds indisputable expression in prices. In 1895, when the grading of butter was initiated, the value of that product exported from New Zealand was £263,244; in 1909 it was £1,485,925. When the grading of cheese began in 1900 we sent away £205,25S worth; in 1909 the export value had risen to £993,098. In 1892, when the Dairy Industry Act, "to regulate the manufacture of butter and cheese for export and to provide for the purity of the milk used in such manufacture" was passed, the total value of the products sent away from the country was £318,204. During the year ended September 30th last, in addition to satisfying the substantial local requirements, New Zealand exported buiter and cheese worth £2,987.461. As a matter of fact, since the State, by v.'ifie discrimination, helpful advice, expert leaflets, and rigid inspection, devoted atention to stimulating this industry it has gone ahead by such leaps . and bounds that we frequently dispatch to England a greater quantity in a month than we sent previously in a ' year. This has been accomplished in spite of the handicap of distance and against the growing competition of ;

other countries. It is a record of which Governments, settlers, private commercial companies and others are entitled to be proud.