THE PRODUCTION OF BUTTER, BACON AND EGGS, IN DENMARK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1201, 8 March 1895, Page 8

THE PRODUCTION OF BUTTER, BACON AND EGGS, IN DENMARK.

WIIWWII ■■■■■# 111 ■»«iiiiiimiiii The following extract from Mrs Alec Tweedie’s work, “ A Winter Jaunt in Norway,” shows how thoroughly the dairy industry has been developed in Denmark : “We were most anxious to ha.y& a peep at a butter factory after T hearing that England imported LI 1,965,284 worth of that commodity in 1892, onethird of which had come from Denmark. Such figures are enough to excite any English person’s interest at a time when landlords, farmers and labourers are all crying out that ruin is staring them in the face, and that nothing agricultural can be worked at a profit. So thought Denmark twenty years ago, and poverty had settled on the land ; but one day she awoke from her lethargy, and started producing butter, bacon, and eggs with such marvellous results that Denmark is a flourishing country to-day, giving employment to her people, and filling her coffers with English gold. How has this come about? “ The Danish farmers have seen the : advisability of cc-operation, and have realised that it is impossible to'keep j one standard of butter when everyone j makes the article according to his own I particular fancy. They started small butter factories here and there, to which j a few farmers sent their cream, and the butter was made on the most approved ! scientific principles. Little bylittle the work has spread, until factories are to he met with all over the land, and the big farmer and the little crofter* alike send their cream to be made into butter for the English market. “ The system has been so wonderfully perfected that veterinary surgeons visit the farms once a fortnight, when every case of disease among the cattle is isolated. The animals are fed on rigorous diet, the milkers are properly trained, the milk is strained and cooled by ice immediately. The cream is separated by centrifugal machines. Means of transport are rapid and excellent, and once the cream reaches the factory the butter is made so , methodically that one girl can do an amount of work which it would require six to accomplish under other conI ditions.

“It is this combined labour, this wonderful system, built upon year by year, that has made butter-making in Denmark the success it is, and not ‘ State aid,’ as many erroneously suppose. The State holds and awards

prizes, and does so on such an excellent system that it raises the standard of butter every year, but beyond that the State has nothing to do with the trade.

“ Nothing is wasted in Denmark ; all the batter milk is used in feeding the pigs, and the bacon that is sent yearly to England amounts in value to considerably over L 1,000,000 sterling. But little Denmark does not stop even here. The egg trade is worth over L 400,000 per annum. And it may astonish some people to learn that over a million eggs are sent every day to the English market from foreign sources. “ The Danish egg trade is again the result of co-operation. The rich farmer with his hundreds of eggs per diem, and the little crofter with his half-dozen, merely keep them until the arrival of the district egg-collector. This person calls every week, and has them properly packed, and sends them off to England in thousands.”