FEWER DAIRY COWS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23425, 15 August 1939, Page 8

FEWER DAIRY COWS

Unfavourable seasons and other temporary conditions can be responsible for a decline in the output of any industry based on the soil. Such causes are held to have been the chief factor in a decline of over 13 per cent in dairy production, measured on a butter-fat basis, for the 1938-39 season. This is not reliable evidence of any backward movement in the industry. It may be merely a temporary setback from which prompt recovery can be made. Stock figures tell a different story altogether. Those just issued by the Government Statistician record a fall of 19,000 in the number of dairy cows during the year covered. With a total of 1,873,000 in the previous year, this might not seem a very serious decline—little more than 1 per cent, in fact. However, it is part of a steady decrease that has occurred since 1935, the difference between the total that year and the latest issued being 98,000, or just over 5 per cent. It is also notable that since 1936 pigs have declined 125,000 from the far smaller peak of 808,000. This may be accepted as inevitable, the pig industry being so largely a subsidiary of dairying. A parallel fact is that the interim sheep returns for this year showed a decline of 521,000 in the Dominion's flocks. These figures all point the one way, to a substantial decrease in the animals from which New Zealand's pastoral output is principally derived. They are a melancholly commentary on the claim that the farmer was never better off than under the conditions now ruling. In other countries when guaranteed minimum prices or subsidies have been granted, output has tended to increase sufficiently to upset all calculations. It has not done so under the guaranteed dairy prices, and the fall in the number of cows pastured is significant of a very different, movement.