BUTTER-FACTORIES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—There is, no doubt, a great opening for co-operation among farmers; but the superiority of butter-factories over home-dairies is not as clear as you represent. At present prices butter-making does not pay, unless a retail sale for it can be obtained. It is a good average, even for a butter- factory, to get a pound of butter from two and a half gallons (twenty pints) of milk, and ls. a pound for factory-butter is probably more than has been made wholesale during the last twelve months as an average. This is less than 5d. a gallon for the milk, even if the separated milk covers the expenses of butter-making, which is doubtful. Farmers whose wives or daughters do the dairy-work have no expenses worth men- tioning, and certainly less than the cost of conveying the milk to the factory. If they have a retail sale for their butter, whether good or bad, they do much better than they would tinder the factory system. Cheese pays much better than butter, and the sale of milk to the town better still. The average sale of all the butter imported during the last eight months is only a minute fraction over 10-id. a pound, and that of the large supply from Australasia is only 9id. Until the extreme competition which has brought butter down to such unremunerative prices subsides, it will be folly to start new butter-making undertakings. Our foreign and Colonial competitors feel the depression severely, and some of them must fall out of the contest if prices do not improve. New Zealand farmers are now getting only lid. a gallon for their milk from the factories. Irish farmers get only 3d. from their co-operative creameries. What English farmers need to do is to establish co-operative factories for several kinds of produce, and with them shops for the retail sale of their goods in the towns.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Previous page
