ON THE LAND

Southland Times, Issue 22210, 30 December 1933, Page 5

ON THE LAND

WORK OF THE WEEK

BENEFICIAL FALL OF RAIN

REFRESHED PASTURES

The advent of Christmas heralded a rainfall spread over several days that was extremely welcome to farmers, causing pastures and crops to come away excellently. With the New Year past the freezing works will be killing to full capacity, while the wool stores will b'e busily engaged in handling consignments for the first sale at the end of January.

The prolonged spell of dry weather before Christmas had made itself felt in many parts of the province, although even then the pastures were in good order and the grass had come away rapidly. At present the farm-lands are looking in splendid condition. Shearing operations arc now practically at an end and the stores will soon be full, leaving the work of classing, binning and cataloguing to be carried out next month. If northern prices are maintained, local growers should reap an average price of at least £l3 to £l4 a bale, a profitable price for the first time for a few years. This year’s clip is reported to be in splendid order, and with the renewed demand for crossbred wools, the dearth of passings and the prices should both be gratifying. The freezing works have not been so busy during the week as was expected, but it is anticipated that a rush will take place after the holidays. Persistent rumours have been current that an. alteration will be made to the fat lamb schedule, but the Southland Frozen Meat Company states that this is not the case. The current schedule will apply to next week’s killings. Both the company’s works at Makarewa and Mataura and the Ocean Beach Freezing Company’s works will re-open after the holidays on January 3. Beef Export.

There are some difficulties to be overcome before New Zealand can hope to develop a big chilled beef export trade, apart altogether from any question of a quota restriction. It is essential in our hill-fanning practice to run big cattle, and joints from big cattle are quite out of favour in England. The Meat Board intends insisting on a stricter grading of beef to be chilled for export, in order to avoid giving this class of trade a bad name to start with, but grading will only concern the quality, not the weight. Heavy land could provide the type of beef in demand, but if dairying improves to a small degree there will be very little of this class of land available for beef. In any case, most dairying land is too dear for beef, even at prices much better than those ruling for meat at present, or likely to rule for a long time to come. A class of country where the right kind of beef could be raised is on the bigger, well-kept stations of the North Island, where second growth and fern have been well kept down by good husbandry, and where areas exist suitable for finishing off the young cattle as they come from their mothers. There are limited areas of this character in the South Island, provided the land is not excessively valued. Several reasons suggest themselves for this change in England from the large to the small joint, most of them obvious. A report states that the preference now is for 81b. roasts against the .15 or 201 b. The heavy side weighing 650 pounds and up is largely limited to hotel and restaurant trade and comes into competition in Great Britain with Argentine beef selling at a price that New Zealanders would almost need to get for the cattle on the hoof. A Canadian report states that beef men in that country have felt the brunt of this swing to smaller carcasses, for with the depression and other causes forcing the prices for cattle lower and lower, many feeders kept their steers long after they should have been marketed and now find themselves with an unusually large number of heavy cattle weighing 1400 pounds (live weight) and up, which should have been sold cither in 1931 or 1932.

So far this year Canada has shipped more than 25.000 head of cattle to the United Kingdom, but prices generally speaking, have not been very attractive, and as a result fewer feeder cattle are going back to farms for finishing. The Ontario Marketing Board has recently been quite active in getting finished cattle away to the Old Country.

It would seem that if New Zealand wants to develop a beef export trade attractive to the consumer it will have to send two-year-old chilled carcasses Home, and retain the weighty, unattractive carcass for use here. The Danes work on these lines with their bacon export—send away the best and keep the worst. Dairy Produce Prices. The following is a comparison of the dairy produce prices ruling on Thursday and those of a week earlier, the mean of the prices range being given: Dec. 21 Dec. 28 Butter— Danish 100/N.Z. (finest salted) 65/6 67/6 N.Z. (finest unsalted) 71/- 69/Australian (finest salted) 67/6 (finest unsalted) 69/Clicesc— N.Z. (white) 47/6 47/6 N.Z. (coloured) 44/- 44/_ Australian (white) 43/6 Australian (coloured) 42/6