MONTHLY ADVANCES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 68, Issue 5944, 17 May 1944, Page 4

MONTHLY ADVANCES

FARMERS BENEFIT The financial benefit experienced by dairy farmers from the favourable autumn conditions which have prevailed this season will become fully apparent this week in the monthly advances maye by dairy companies. With the exception of one or two small factories, dairy companies in the Waikato have made a monthly advance payment of Is 3Jd per lb butterfat for finest grade cream as from August Ist last. On this basis the Te Awamutu Co-operative Dairy Company’s total monthly payment to suppliers to-morrow is £18,142, compared with £9,712 on the same date last year. The company’s largest monthly payment this season was on January 20th, and amounted to £32,534.

“Dairy companies will have a long overdue increase next season in their monthly payments to suppliers,” said Mr A. J. Sinclair, secretary-manager of the company. “The scales have been heavily tilted against the dairyman in recent years, but the balance will be restored in some small degree as from August Ist next when most of the Waikato and North Island dairy companies will make a monthly advance payment in the region of Is 5d per lb butterfat for finest grade, and this will enable sufficient to be retained for a satisfactory final payment at the end of the season. This action will be taken as a result of the Government’s recent decision to pay an additional 1.21 d per lb butterfat as from August Ist, 1944.”

The prospect of additional supplies of fertiliser netd season would also be a factor in the payments to be distributed monthly, added Mr Sinclair, and an announcement of the Government’s intentions in this respect was being eagerly awaited by dairy farmers who had already been assured that they would receive some degree of priority in the interests of increased production of dairy produce for Great Britain. Mr Sinclair stated that dairy farmers were armost unanimously of opinion that the most equitable method of distribution would be to retain the existing quota system as a starting point, and then allocate the additional supplies on the basis of the number of cows milked. He said that if the new supplies of fertiliser were distributed without the addition of serpentine rock, dairy farmers as a whole would be more than pleased.