NEW ZEALAND BUTTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20959, 24 August 1931, Page 10

NEW ZEALAND BUTTER.

THE GOAL OF QUALITY.

PERFECTION NOT REACHED.

COMPETITION OVERSEAS. SOME PROBLEMS REVIEWED. No. I. So much controversy has raged lately around New Zealand cheese and ways of improving it that, comparatively little public notice has been given to a kindred problem—how the very high averago quality of New Zealand butter can bo raised higher still.

It is a. simpler matter to produce consistently high-grade export butter than to turn out equally good cheese, season after season, for delivery on the other side of the world. Butter is less perishable and changes less in any respect on tho long sea voyage from New Zealand to Britain. The consumer, also, is not so exacting. He (or, rather, she), buys cheese for its flavour. By contrast, butter is asked to be bland and unobtrusive, whether cooked in • a pudding or spread on the daily bread. When markets are depressed and prices fall there is always more discussion upon quality than in prosperous times. This applies not only to dairy produce, but also to meat and other foodstuffs. With the market favouring him, tho buyer is apt to be fastidious. Selling agents are also inclined to make their voices heard, and the producer is bound to take notice. It may seem that the demands of tho market only add to the difficulties he always meets in timo of depression. Happily, in New Zealand, the problem is not ono of outlay so much as of care and thoroughness, which costs but little. Problems of the Pioneers. When one considers how tho Dominion's dairy industry has grown and how its butter output has multiplied within a short lifetime, ono cannot but marvel at tho fact, that the quality of the product has been not only maintained, but steadily improved. New Zealand butter in general is a triumph for efficiency in tho factory and on tho farm. When tho first cargo was exported, dairy science could hardly bo said to exist. The earliest factory managers learned their job in tho school of hard experience, with little or no outside aid.

Tho dairy farmer also had technical problems to face. 'J lioso of herd and pasture management have always been w.th him. The first new one came when tho cream separator made its appearance on tho farm.

The back-blocks settler, in particular, had to master a new technique which would cnablo him to deliver reasonably sound cream to his factory even though ho could send it in but twice, or even once, u week *\\ it.ii good roads and motor transport this difficulty has lessened, but tho standard of quality has risen in an even greater ratio. Farmer's Double Role.

At an interval of years tlio milking machine followed in tho wako of the separator, and tho farmer became perforce something of an engineer in order to manage the plant and its petrol engine. Now electric power has superseded petrol in many parts of the country. It heats water also, and lights tho milking shed on dark mornings, for which benefits he is really thankful. Dairying is a dual occupation. Ihe farmer is faced with two daily activities which, in a way, conflict with each other and which ho must reconcile somehow. Part of his time ho spends in general farm work, handling cattle and horses, in winter often up to his knees in mud and always fairly close to mother earth. When milking timo arrives he must try to become a different sort of person, take a new view of ordinary common dirt and strive for a cleanliness which, if not on tho surgical level, shall at least approach that of a modern foodstuff factory. . That tho New Zealand farmer fills this double role on the whole so well speaks volumes for his intelligence, education and enlightened outlook. If dairying really is, in the words of tho Hon. W. Pember Beeves, a "peasant industry, the New Zealand dairyman is about the best "peasant" tho world knows. Mr. Beeves, indeed, said as much when he remarked that he used the word in its best sense as denoting a man who occupied and worked a single-family farm. Pasture Development. On returning to New Zealand after an absence of 30 years, Mr. Beeves noticed a great improvement in the average farmer's outlook, finding him much more wide-awake, with an almost professional interest in the technique of his craft and real pride in tho results obtained by now methods. . It is <1 far cry now to the second New Zealand pioneering epoch in the nineties, when farmers' sons from the settled districts, with a good sprinkling of townsmen, left comfortable occupations to carve new careers for themselves out of tho North Island bush. Where the forest stood is now pasture, and tho farmer's struggle is not to conquer wild nature, but to hold his place in the world's markets. To produce uniformly good butter on a commercial scale even for immediate consumption is not altogether easy. New Zealanders, who have travelled in the United States agree that butter there is generally much below the standard to which they aro accustomed at home. It very often has an unpleasant flavour, and sometimes even the appearance is unattractive. This state of affairs is not due to any theoretical difficulties in butter production. The ideal technique at every stage from pasture to packing-room is well known; only the human element is apt to fail. A Battle o! Quality. in its export trade, New Zealand has greater troubles to overcome. In prolonged cool storage butter is liable to develop unwanted flavours if not made with very great care indeed. It is a commonplace that on the English market New Zealand butter lias to meet the competition of tho home-grown article and the huge Danish output; both of which are made for almost, immediate consumption. Failure to compete would mean that it would be relegated to lower-class trade levels, which tend to be invaded more and more by inferior foreign butters aud the various grades of margarine. A battle of quality is being waged, and New Zealand cannot afford to lose. 1 What offers most encouragement, as has been stated already, is that to refine the already excellent product still further calls for comparatively little expense, and whatever is spent upon it is bound to yield a good return.