BUTTER PRICES.

Southland Times, Issue 19772, 21 February 1923, Page 2

BUTTER PRICES.

To the Editor.

Sir, —I would like to draw your, (and cf course your readers’) attention to the extraordinary anomaly in the local price of butter. I may say ,1 have just read a letter in your issue of Friday last signed “A Genuine Milker” and I entirely agree with what he says. I may further say that A.G.M. deserves the thanks of all dairy farmers and of the public generally for his manly letter. In your paper of the same date, (Friday 16th, inst.) the current price quoted for butter is—factory 1/8, separator 1/1 per pound. Why this difference? Many people prefer the separator. Personally I would rather have one pound of it than one and a half pounds of factory, and I ought to be a judge, seeing that'when a child in wandering round the family table, set ready for tea, I grabbed a pat of butter, and with a rapid motion <of the hand, placed the whole pat neatly into my mouth, whence it was, with some difficulty, extracted, my mother fearing I would be choked, or lose my life from some bilious trouble. I cannot recall the incident myself. Now, Sir, can you tell me who has the regulating of the price of butter. Why are the public charged 1/8 for an article inferior in every respect, to the same thing which can be bought for 1/1. I do not say that all separator butter is good; there are of course, exceptions, but all factory butter is nearly the same. I wish every success to the newly formed Farmers’ Usury Federation Ltd., and that this company, together with the practical good sense of the dairying community and of the public generally, will put a set on the octopus which has reared its selfish head in our midst.—l am, MILKER ON A SMALL SCALE.* (If the butter sold at 1/1 is superior and suited to the public taste, the 1/8 butter would have small chance in competition. Public taste probably plays a big part in fixing the difference, and our correspondent will probably agree that public taste is often difficult to understand. Some eulogistic references to ourselves we have excised with modest blushes.---Ed. S.T.).