DAIRY ENTERPRISE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18994, 16 April 1925, Page 10

DAIRY ENTERPRISE.

NEW ZEALAND'S EXAMPLE. COMMENDED TO AMERICANS. PRAISE FROM A PROFESSOR. Professor Theo. Macklin, of the, University of Wisconsin, holds up New Zealand dairy farmers as an example to American farmers. In .addressing the eleventh annual meeting of the Federated Cheese Producers at Plymouth, Wisconsin, he said:—"What we are trying to get at is how have 45,000 farmers in this little country south of tho equator developed a co-operative marketing system for butter and cheese? What can we learn by experience Irom /view* Zealand which we might apply in Wisconsin?" flio keynote of the success of the New Zealand co-operatives, as described by Professor Macklin, are :

1. lliey grade every gallon of milk received at a factory when received. The system in Wisconsin is giving dairy farmers 100 per cent, for the rottenest milk turned into a cheese factory.

2. They pay for quality. They will not buy one pound of milk that is ungraded • then they pay on the basis of quality. 3. Management: No co-operative enterprise can run in competition with private business without following business principles. There is going to be no real co-operative success in Wisconsin until you hire the other fellow's best help. The speaker went on to say:—"Tho Government of New Zealand has a grading system, which was started in 1892. They put grading marks on all products. The system has developed to such an extent that the merchants in London buy by Government grades instead of inspection. If a wholesaler is selling more cheese and getting better prices than anothei, they give him cheese in preference to the other. Thus the wholesalers are competing against each other to get the cheese. About two years ago, after ten years of effort, the dairymen «>f New Zealand got tho Government to pass a law. the resolution. as drawn up by them, was somewhat as follows:-—"Whereas for ten years private competition has refused to grade and pay for quality, let us go together and bv one unified sales system stamp out these evils.' "A council, composed of nine representatives of .the <liiry industry, two Government appointees, affd one private middleman, is devising the system. These men travelled through Wisconsin recently. Thev went, back on the ship on which Dean Russell and I went to New Zealand."' remarked Professor Macklin. ''Just to provo how conservative they arc one of them was in the same, cabin with us, and it, was fourteen days before we got acquainted with him. These men will" not take any steps that they will have to retrace."