FARMING PROSPECTS

New Zealand Mail, 29 January 1902, Page 33

FARMING PROSPECTS

VIEWS OF A SOUTH AUSTRALIAN LEGISLATOR.

THE DAIRYING INDUSTRY. Mr R. Caldwell, M.L.A., ciiairman of the Dairy Board of South Australia, has just completed a tour of the colony from Taranaki to Otago. The present is the third visit Mr Caldwell has paid to New Zealand, the first one dating over twenty years ago. The second visit of Mr Caldwell to New Zealand was made only three years since, but he opines that in the interim between then and now wonderful changes have taken place in the development of this colony, and more especially in the province of Taranaki. The land there has doubled and even trebled itself in value. Sections which three years ago were offered for sale at £5 per acre are now quoted at £lO and £ls per acre; and over the whole district there is an air of prosperity. This, says our visitor, is primarily—if not wholly—due to the development of our dairying industry. The giant strides which it has made in late years Mr Caldwell considers to be due in great measure to the system of Government grading of butter. This system lias commended itself to Mr Caldwell, and he intends to re.commend its adoption to his Board. He finds that there is in the dairying districts here an inclination to restrict cheesemaking and increase butter manufacture, the reasons being the lesser time in which the latter commodity can be realised upon, and the return from it of the skim milk (which in cheesemaking cometh not) —thereby allowing of the cheap and successful rearing of “poddy” calves. The conditions and climate of New Zealand have struck Mr Caldwell as being peculiarly favourable to dairying, especially in regard to the abundant rainfall which comes to us. In South Australia the land is of at least equal richness in a great many districts, more especially in the Warrnambool district, (a continuation of the Victorian district of that name), and the Mount Gambier district. These are two of the best dairying districts in that colony, but in the great majority’ of the districts the precarious na< ere of the rainfall affects the continuity of good grass. Steady, progress, however, is being made with the dairying industry in South Australia under the protective influence of a practically prohibitive tariff on cheese and butter.

; Mr Caldwell, as a result of his observa- | tions, considers New Zealand to be in a j flourishing condition from one end to ! the other, though he was disappointed to see that the grain crops were not so 1 redundant at present as they were on ; the occasion of his last visit. He, however, admitted that lie had not visited Marlborough, where just now the barley fields are like “seas of golden glory,” and where the wheat crops wave heavily luxuriant. The barley crops of Otago were almost failures, and other grains—though better—were yet disappointing when judged in the light ' of previous showings. Mr Caldwell spoke of the labour legislation of this colony. He was not ‘favourably impressed by it, though he admitted that its effect was to make for the betterment of the people. Where it would tell prejudicially would be in our competition with the outside world—and that would have to come as our productiveness progressed. Then the restrictions as to wages and hours of labour would be ruinous to the colony’s prospects. He was pleased to see that the dairy industry had been exempted from the operations of labour laws—to apply them to it would mean crippling the industry at first, and then a gradual extinction. He was surprised to find that butter factories in this colony were worked seven days a week, thereby making the lives of the employees one of constant drudgery. There was really no necessity for this state of affairs, for in South Australia—with a temperature of about 20 degrees higher average than New Zealand’s —they managed to run their factories properly on six days a week:. If Sunday labour in butter-factories were to be mooted there, there would be an outcry from one end of the State to the other. Their method in South Australia was to take milk up to midnight on Saturday, and then the farmers could manage to keep the rest of the milk good until Monday morning. Mr Caldwell has found much to instruct and to please him during his stay in this colony, and he expressed his appreciation of the many kindnesses he had received during his stay.