DANISH DAIRY FARMING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2985, 31 May 1911, Page 19

DANISH DAIRY FARMING.

Danish dairying is so frequently stated to embody all the virtues that an opinion to the contrary is quite refreshing. Mr Primrose M'Connell, B.Sc, writes in the Farmers' Gazette: " A well-known writer has been contributing a scries of articles to one of the leading papers on the things he saw in farming matters in Denmark during a recent trip ho made to that country, and he has excelled most of his predecessors in his laudation of the Danish method of farming. There have been some visitors from this country who did not go to the show places, but went prowling round on their own hook, and who have drawn up very different reports, and there have been rumours about Danish farming methods being tried in this country that have not been a conspicuous success; but let that pass. Further, attontion was recently drawn to what some thinking Danes were saying about their own systems of farming, in pointing out that in butter-making alone there was an annual loss of three million pounds, and this must come to an end some time; but lot that also pass._ Tho) object of this note is to call attontion to tho fact that the Statements of tho writer referred to above refute themselves, unles3 ho can explain his figures away. Ho states that Danish butter fetches about a shilling per lb; in another part of the same article he says that he has worked out tho price of milk at 6£d per imperial gallon, or just above tho same value as wo average in this country after deducting carriage. Now, it takes three gallons of milk to make a pound of butter—in other words, about seventeen or eighteen pence to produce a shilling! It is evident that the Danish farmers will have to stop this

method of farming very soon. It is exactly because of this that in this country have dropped butter-making, and it is because of this and other things that Danish methods are completely out of favour with those who understand matters. They can teach us the benefits of co-opera-tion, and we are learning fast, but they can teach us nothing else."