BUTTER SUPPLIES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 204, 29 July 1937, Page 8

BUTTER SUPPLIES

SUGGESTED WINTER YIELD. VIE AYS OF PROFESSOR RIDDET. That there was need for consideration of how to obtain a more uniform butter production throughout New Zealand was an opinion expressed by Professor W. Riddet, Director of the Dairy Research Institute, in an address to the shareholders of the Levin Dairy Co. at their annual meeting, yesterday. That, he said, was important from two points of view. Firstly, butter made in August and September was much more yellow in colour than that made at other periods of the year. It would appear that that was mainly due to the butter being made from the milk of cows coming into profit in those months That butter, when marketed, presented quite a different appearance from the butter to which consumers were accustomed in the late summer months in Great Britain. Further, it was a common practice, especially in the north-west of England and the south-west of Scotland, for grocers to sell Irish butter during the British summer months and to change over to Dominion butter in the winter months. . . 'The second main reason for giving consideration to the possibility of producing butter all the year round was that all that part of England which lay south of the Midlands was supplied principally with Australian and New Zealand butter and was becoming pro gressively more dependent on those supplies. In order that the supply should continuously be a fresh one, it •was to the greatest interest of New Zealand that production should be more evenly spread throughout the yeai and that butter should [>e stored for a shorter period. It did not necessarily follow that every butter-produc-ing district need carry uniform production throughout the year. The offering of a premium in winter for high quality butter would attract those areas that were most adapted to take up the trade.

THE DANISH PRODUCT. Some might have been impressed by arguments made locally that we should produce a butter like Danish, proceeded Professor Riddet. The Danish butter was sold very largely on a standing contract for a year. The trade people who handled the Danish butter did not buy New Zealand butter. There was no point in thinking that we could wrest that market from Denmark. There was no point in trying to steal the market from them, because we would have to make a firstgrade butter and sell it at a second grade price. The market could be expanded for both with mutual advantage.