AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3494, 22 February 1921, Page 10

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

The South Island Dairy Association has received cable advice from London of an agreement to reduce cheese freights to lid per lb, plus 10 per cent., this reduction being retrospective to and including the November shipment. This has been accepted, and represents a reduction on the season’s cheese freights to London from the dominion of at least £200.000. What the conveyance of cheese means to the shipping companies may be gauged from the fact that a farthing per lb on the season’s output from the dominion represents approximately £250,000. Owing to the adoption of the go-slow-policy by the butchers in its employ the Poverty Bay Farmers’ Meat Company (says a Press Association telegram from Gisborne) has closed the Waipaoa Freezing Works, and paid off a large number of hands. A director of the company stated to a reporter that the mutton output had decreased from 3200 carcases on Monday to 900 on Tuesday. The decrease was maintained since. It is stated that the go-slow policy was adopted by the mutton butchers with a view to compelling the company to pay a bonus of 5s per 100 sheep. The bonus, it is stated, has been paid by another freezing works on account of the isolation and the difficulty in obtaining butchers. The beef butchers are quite prepared to continue work at present rates. A bunch of exceptionally heavy oat-heads gathered from a 25-acre Sparrowbill crop grown by Mr Harry Todd, of Otikerama, was brought into the Mataura Ensign office on Monday. An industrious farmer, who brought the bunch into the Ensign office, had counted five heads taken at random from ihe small sheaf, and found the number of “ pickles,” or grains, on these to be 1123, which, ho says, is a record. Mr Todd paid the top price of 6s for his seed, but evidently secured a good sample and lias made the best use of it. A Taranaki firm is sending a shipment of three Friesians-—one bull and two heife.rs —to Fiji, where an effort is being made to establish the dairy industry At Edendale is to be seen a harvested field of grass seed (crested dogstail). The area is some 15 acres, and the cash value of the seed is estimated at £SOO. “It is not the farmer who is profiteering.” remarked an Eitham farmer to an Argus representative. “For his pigs he is nowable to obtain only 4jd per lb, and buyers will not- look at three-year-old bullocks if the farmer asks any more than than £8 10a for them.”