Acme, June 8—To cash in on their surplus milk supply and to start a project for promoting the dairy industry, with the consequence of stabilizing of farm income and utilization of farm products usually wasted, 10 charter members agreed here in a meeting Monday night with George Folk, raiser of thoroughbred cattle at Rocky Point and cow specialist of the United States Department of Agriculture, together with J.T. Lazar, county demonstration agent, to subscribe stock in a cooperative purchase of thoroughbred bull for breeding purposes and a community cream separator to be used for preparing sour cream for market.
Enough cows of good breeding giving sufficient milk to supply the needs of the community are owned by the farmers of the community. The surplus milk will be turned into the cooperative milk association, separated and the sour cream sent to the creamery at Florence, S. Carolina.
An organization was formed under the direction of Mr. Folk and County Agent Lazar that will seek other members for the association. It is expected that a good many will be secured and that the purchase of a thoroughbred bull will build up milk and cattle producing in the community.
In his talk to the farmers present, Mr. Folk told them that he was not making a speech as Department of Agriculture specialist or a painter of rosy pictures of sudden wealth to be made easily from dairying. He came, he said, as a North Carolina farmer raising purebred cows on his own plantation at Rocky Point. Cows could be made to pay their way and give a profit, but it took work, foresight and judgement, and he was not claiming anything else less they plunge into an expensive dairy business, go broke and then call him “another damyankeeswindler.” He went into cattle and milk producing business, giving figures in practical operations and showed the farmers how with the strictest bookkeeping a cow could be made to pay her board, lodging and for her care out of the surplus cream she produced. And this pay would be coming in regularly each week in the form of a paycheck from the creamery to which the separated cream would be shipped. This weekly payment of expenses in cash-in—hand the year round was one good feature of the business, he said, since it would give the farmer cash and enable him to go on a cash basis.
But the real profit in the business came, he said, from the skimmed milk by-product to be fed to hogs, poultry and other farm animals. Taken altogether, one or two cows on a farm would stabilize it with a steady income, promote raising home-grown feeds and tend to round out the farm production and do away with too much one- or two-crop specialization that keeps the farmer worked to death in one season and loafing in another.
All of Mr. Folk’s figures were verified by Mr. Lazar. He likewise predicted work in the business and a fair profit, but no fortunes. The stabilization and by-products were the things of greatest value, he said. He told of several farmers near Chadbourn who had money in the bank, paid cash for their supplies, and had a steady income. Each of these had cows and were selling cream; they were raising chickens and hogs on the skim milk; they worked their farms and did not let the farms work them.
Milk produced from the Acme association will be separated in the community separator and shipped cooperatively to the Florence creamery. According to the figures given by Mr. Folk, the average income for ordinary two-gallon cows will be 15 cents per day, with the skimmed milk as an extra item on the credit side. Special arrangements have been made with the Atlantic Coast Line Railway that will allow the shipment of cream as baggage and at a low cost. The full-blooded bull will be used to grade up the cattle of the members of the association.
L.M. Bane of the cooperative tobacco marketing association and J.M. Parker, editor of the News Reporter, both of Whiteville, also attended the meeting.
From the front page of The News Reporter, Whiteville, N.C., Thursday, June 11, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn85042236/1925-06-11/ed-1/seq-1/
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