THE BUTTER AND CHEESE OUTPUT.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 539, 3 September 1897, Page 3

THE BUTTER AND CHEESE OUTPUT.

In the course of an interview with the Wellington correspondent of the N. Z. Herald, Mr McGuire said that the output of butter and cheese for the present year will be very much greater than that of any previous year, possibly twice as great. The people in the dairy factories, and the farmers who supply them with milk, are hopoful of even greater results from year to year. The industry has raised the price of milk in some places from 24d to 4d per gallon. The amount of benefit it confers upon a district only a farmer or dairyman can adequately appreciate. The general public, he says, has very little conception of the extent and value of the industry. There is no kind of enterprise in the colony which promises such great reward to the industrious and intelligent farmer ; but, he adds, several of the districts are heavily weighted in other respects. Many of the men who have been sent by the Govern ment on to the land as settlers are not settlers, and are not likely to become settlers in any legitimate sense of the word. In the first place they have not sufficient land nor sufficient means to make a decent living out of it. A hundred acres of second classlnud isnotenough. They are, he affirms, working a dead horse from the time they go upon the land until they leave it. Men. he says, are sent in for hushfelling. They are paid thirty shillings an acre; that is 10s more than is paid to an ordinary contractor, grass beed is given to them, and they are paid an extra price for sowing it; but they do not become permanent settlers. They only stay on the land as long as it suits them. They have no capital, and as a rule they can make no permanent improvement.