FARMING TOPICS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 15

FARMING TOPICS

NEWS FROM VARIOUS SOURCES Cheese and Milk in Scotland "The Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland have certified that for the month of January, 1939, the cheese-milk price was 6.55 d a gallon, and the buttermilk price was 5.77 d a gallon. The above report refers to what may be regarded as surplus milk. At Home, 75 per cent of production is devoted to the retail trade in liquid milk. Assuming the milk payments given to have been on milk of 4 per cent fat content the butterfat payouts would be 16.47 d a lb on cheese and 14.42 d on butter. Liquid milk sales, however, return 2/to 2/3 a lb of fat content. At Home almost all dairying statements are given on a gallonage basis. British Milk Record Terling Graceful 10th, the 24th British Friesian pedigree cow to yield not less than 3000 gallons of milk in not more than 365 days, has established a new British annual milk yield record by producing 3783 gallons in 365 days. She displaces the British Friesian cow, Findlay Clara 2nd, which gave 3612 gallons in 365 days, a record that stood for 14 years. Born in May, 1931, and bred and owned by Lord Rayleigh’s Farms, Terling Graceful 10th gave her record-breaking yield after her fifth calving, in previous lactations. she produced 1078, 1949, 1727 and 2213 gallons, so that, before reaching the age of 8, she has yielded upwards of 10,000 gallons of milk. Consumption of Fats The factory consumption of primary animal and vegetable fats and oils amounted to 2,317,067 tons in 1938, according to a recent report by the United States Department of Commerce. Of this total, 1,100,145 tons were used in the manufacture of edible products of which 69 per cent was in shortening compounds, 14 per cent in oleo-margarine, and 17 per cent in salad oils and other edible products. Of the total consumption of 764,402 tons of cotton-seed oil, oleomargarine took only 71,426 tons, or less than one-tenth. Shortening compounds took 520,081 tons of cotton-seed oil, or more than seven times as much as oleo-margarine. Shortening compounds took 63,390 tons pf animal fats, or seven times that of oleo-margarine. Disease Research Cost Research into foot and mouth disease in England has cost £200,000 since 1924. The commissioners controlling the expenditure stated in their annual report last month that they were satisfied tha in the present state of knowledge the country must rely for protection against this devastating disease on such measures as can be taken to safeguard its live stock against infection from outside, and that, insofar as administrative action is possible, it would be false economy to limit the expenditure required to provide adequate inspection of sources of potention danger. Although £200,000 has been spent since 1924 in investigations into foot-and-mouth disease, the results have been disappointing, and no method of stamping out the disease other than by slaughtering the aflected animals is in sight.” Light by the Inch You now ca- buy your light bulbs by the inch. New fluorescent lamps introduced recently at the Merchandise Mart, Chicago, are rated by their length instead of by the watt. Illumination of the average living room for reading purposes can be accomplished with an eighteenth-inch tube using fifteen watts current. Employing mercury vapour instead of the conventional filament, the n“w type lamps, the makers state, give five to six times as much light with half the heat loss incurred in a filament type bulb consuming the same amount of current. By means of an adaption they can be screwed into any light socket. A variety of colours is obtained by varying the composition of the fluorescent coating on the inner surface of the tube. Green lamps have been found to give the most light for the money. Elm Disease The elm is likely to lose its dominating place in the English countryside. During the last 10 years thousands have been killed or marred as the result of the virulent disease first identified in Holland soon after the war and often known as Dutch Elm Disease. There is no known cure. Hope for the retention of the elm lies partly in the raising of an immune strain. An agricultural expert says: “Elm disease is caused by a fungus that is carried by the elm bark beetle. The beetle bores into the bark and transmits the fungus that infects the sapwood, where the disease will continue to live without furt’ ?r infection. Boughs c.’ trees affected by the disease wither and die, and the first thing noticed is discolouration of the leaves. Eventually decay wall spread to the whole tree, although the tree will often recover if it is not killed outright the first season it is attacked. Marketing in Wart’ ’e Australia! primary producers feel the need for a spr-fal organisation to take charge in event of war m Europe. Committees representing the primary producing industries will be appointed to formulate plans for the conservation of food and essential products in the event of war. “Representatives of the wool, meat, dairying, dried fruits and canned fruits industries have met th? Minister for Commerc', to discuss arrangements for organising supply and demand, including Australian production, home consumption and exportable surplus. The committees will investigate the machinery’ needed for marketing products in Australia and abroad, taking 1 the necessary steps to safeguard the interests both of producers and consumers. At the same time, methods of financing, production and marketing tn the event of dislocation of shipping, as well as storage and cargo space, w,.l be considered.”