OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 14347, 27 October 1910, Page 6

OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

RURAL NEW ZEALAND UNDER REVIEW. No. 1, Being the first of a Series of Articles —statistical ami descriptive—concerning the Life and Activities of Rural Now Zealand. By R. J. EAMES. [All Rights Reserved.] TARANAKI: THE PROVINCE PROLIFIC. Tn selecting Taranaki as the starting point for this review the writer is actuated by no other motive than that of convenience. But at the same time this its a province of such extraordinary fertility—and the bounding prices of its pasture lands have brought it under such pointed and general attention — that the district for its own news worth will very well serve as an initial field for investigation. Sixty-eight yearn ago it was realised that Taranaki had pleasing possibilities of profitable carpets of lush grass, but the idea apparently did not suggest itself to writers of that period that within so short a snare of time forest and fern would ho cleared and the countryside would prejvont the appearance of smiling prosperity it wearsdo-day. In 1842. Dr. R. 0. Jameson, one time surgeon superintendent to emigrants to South Australia, wrote a record of his travels in New Zealand, but the most the author could say of ‘The garden” was this: “In the district of Taranaki, which is possessed by the New Zealand Company, grass is said to bo in sufficient abundance for the maintenance of cattle!” The official declaration of the year 1010, under the authority of the Right lion, the Prime Minister, is: “Taranaki may be said to he the most compact and fertile district of the Dominion!” So much by way of introduction. AN AMAZINGLY FERTILE CORNER If the render will take a map of. Now Zealand, and with that before him carefully peruse the following paragraph, ho will bo relieved of any suspicion that tho immediately preceding cross-head-ing deals recklessly in superlatives. Take tho map furnished by the Government in tho railway timo-t'ahle. On the lefthand .side of the North Island the most prominent feature of tho coast line is Capo Egniont. Close to the right of tho asterisk which locates Mount Egmonl there is a red lino running north and south. That represents the railway between Hawera and New Plymouth. If you put the ball of vour thumb over the territory cut off bv the railway lino to tho sen, you will 'have beneath it an area which takes away only a small scran from the bulk of the North Island of Now Zealand. Vet that territory, with a little strip to the east of tho railway line added, produced last season, at average London prices, butter and cheese to the value of £1,200,000. I am giving these figures upon the calculation of an official of tho Egmont Box Co., who puts down that sum as being required to fill the boxes and cases supplied during the season by his company alone. Besides that great amount of dairy factory produce it is estimated that' the land under the point of your thumb is capable of raising every year 100.000 bacon pigs. Nor does the foregoing exhaust tho capabilities. There is still a lot of land under sheep and dry cattle, although every year farms are being added to their area under milch cows. Round about the Glover Road factory, close to Hawora—just by way of common example—there are something like 1500 acres of valuable properly not milked upon, but which, it is smid, is to bo cut up next year for dairying. In this vicinity some farmers think that £GS per acre is not too much to pay. But hankers and financial authorities stiffen when one talks of it. Of all tho rich corner to which we have just made reference the most fertile part skirts the southern const of the nigger part of that protuberance tho point of which wo know as the Capo. It is there that the Hawera, Normnnby, Okaiawa, and Mangatoki factories, as well as thus throe great co-operativo concerns—HivercJnlc, Kaupokonui, and Jell's—are situated. PROJECT CONCERNING PIGS. Tho Year Book gives the number of swine in the whole of the Taranaki district in 1000 as 50,265. which ‘makes the foregoing estimate (100,000) appear disproportionately high, but it lias to be remembered that the importance of pigs ns a valuable side lino to dairying is only beginning to be fully realised, Lately there has been a great revival of interest in pigs. Farmers witli long heads have begun to recognise that if tho principles of co-ope-ration—which have proved so beneficial in the manufacture of butter and cheese—could bo applied to bacon, the earning capacity ot the farm would bo greatly increased. Taranaki lias not got to the stage whore co-operative pigraising is contemplated, but there is a very strong agitation afoot to kill and cure and market pigs, with groups of dairy factories as contributing holders in the ham and bacon business. The heads of the movement about Kltham and Mangatoki have both eyes open. They are calculating not only upon the finished barn and bacon, hut are inquiring into tho values of the multifarious by-products. They are thinking American thoughts just now. They want, if they can, to turn even the squeal to profit. Later on we shall have something more to say about this project. Just now it is undeveloped, but there is every evidence that it will materialise within a short space of time. A MODERN CANAAN. laterally, Taranaki is a land flowing with milk and honey. The production of a high percentage of butter-fat, and the largest possible quantity of milk, gives daily exercise to the energies of the dairy farmer of rapacity. The clover fields and garden blooms give ever widening scope for the operations of the busy bee, which is beginning to count its annual gathering in tons. Tho climate is invigorating and healthy, the rainfall is abundant, and the grass grows all the year round. It is a land of rather remarkable compensations. If tho dwellers in the townships complain occasionally that the spells of web weather are too prolonged, tho men on the land rest content in the certain knowledge that a heavy rainfall is a Providential dispensation. Tho porous nature of the soil requires it imperatively. If the gardener inveighs against tho salt sprays which have carried devastation amongst his crops and burnt the foliage black, the dairy farmer knows that even if a temporary check to tho grass has accurrod tho pastures have been sweetened and savoured that they may yield n greater abundance. In tho days of brilliant sunshine those mellifluous meadows arc tho last word in pastoral beauty. Snow-crowned Egniont stands for ever as tho beacon to show tho way to the searchers for the modern Canaan. But

there is tho law of compensation again. People who would coin© to spy out tlio land in these days must ho prepared to pay the price. AVith that aspect of tho question wo will deal in its proper place. Every year there is a heavy ebb and flow of population, and it will bo interesting to inquire into the causes.