The Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Tuesday, October 28, 1879.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 935, 28 October 1879, Page 2

The Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Tuesday, October 28, 1879.

Co-operative farming among small farmers is what the steam plough and the steam threshing machine is to large farmers. It is a system by which much expense, labor, and waste is avoided. We will explain what cooperative farming means, as we ourselves have seen it worked out in another Colony, and this with a most undoubted and undeniable success. "We will take some agricultural district where there are twenty small farms, some in which twenty or thirty acres are under cultivation; others where there are fifty, sixty, or seventy. Now, each of these farms must possess a dairy for the making of cheese and butter ; and buildings for the curing of hams or bacon. Those who only cultivate grain and root crops must hire a threshing machine and take out their root crops with spade or fork. Well, then, all expense and cost of labor is very greatly lessened in this way : — The twenty or thirty farmers, instead of having twenty or thirty dairy buildings, most of which are very unfit for dairy purposes, only liave one large and properly constructed dairy, competently and economically managed by an experienced person. One farmer shall have five cows, another ten, another fifteen, but whatever the number may be, each one conveys his milk in a pure state to -the central dairy. There the milk is tested, measured, and the whole is thrown into one or more large reservoirs. Each farmer states whether it is butter or cheese he wishes his milk to be converted into. He receives a ticket, and when he applies for his butter or cheese, he receives it in a perfect state, according to the quantity of milk he has delivered — the quantity of butter or cheese having been previously fixed by scale. Here one churning for butter, or one curding for cheese, is made to answer for many churnings and curdings improperly performed. The same with regard to the curing of bams and bacon. A farmer drives one or half-a-dozen piga to the curing establishment, where the pigs are killed, cut up, salted, dried, and cured. When the process is completed the bacon and hams are weighed back for what they have yielded, a charge according to scale being made for the killing and curing, and a fair allowance made for the offall. But the co-operative system goes much further

than this. The society or company, or by whatever name it may be called, will make immediate advances upon butter or cheese, or bacon, which enables the farmer to carry on his operations until he is enabled to realise to greater advantage when the markets are favourable. For instance, in Poverty Bay butter is now abundant, and in a few weeks will be lowpriced, but after the turn of the year feed will be scarce, and dairy produce high-priced. But prices are equalised in this way. In these co-operative operations the manager will pot down the butter upon scientific principles* which will keep sweet and good until supplies become scai'ce through want of feed and the drying up of the cows, when the butter or cheese is withdrawn to be disposed of in a good market. The system once formed is easily carried out. Now, with respect to wheat, oats, and potatoes. When the farmer has cut his wheat and it is ready for the threshing machine, it is carted to the barns of the society, where each man's wheat or oats is threshed out, winnowed cleaned and placed in sacks to be weighed. Advances ai'e made on the grain which is sold at a time favorable for its disposal. Potatoes are received in their season, picked over, weighed, bagged, marked and numbered and advances made. The system is this that instead of a number of farms each working their own productions separately, seek the aid of co-operation. More butter and cheese is got from the milk, and is of better quality ; bacon and hams are thoroughly cured, and made moi'e marketable by those skilled in their work. Money is saved in buildings and in labor. The products are larger, and the advances made save the owners of produce from sacrificing it to meet their necessities ; while the Banks assist in . making the advances required by the co-operation system so long as it is being honestly and properly worked. Now, we say, when the farmers meet to-morrow at the Show, cannot they lay their heads together and devise such a scheme as is here suggested, and which works so well in parts of America, in Victoria, and in South Australia. In the latter colony, as many as five or six hundred farms are worked under k the co-operative system, when they have their own steam plough, their teams of magnificent horses and bullocks where the land is too small for steam, They have also their owns flour mills and every costly appliance for the saving of labor. They employ an agricultural chemist to advise them as to the adaptation of crops to particular soils and they have a large surplus set by to meet the emergency of a bad season. We do not at present look for such an extensive system as the above in Poverty Bay ; but we do look for something that will ameliorate the condition and bring a larger share of profit to the farmers in our own districts. Let it be seen to-morrow whether something cannot be better done in the future than we have been doing in the past.