534 IOWA DEPARTMEXT OF AGRICULTURE 



BUTTER OR OLEOMARGARINE 



Aside from their vastly different nutritive values, butter and oleomar- 

 garine have to lowans an economic significance not generally appreciated. 



During the last ten years Iowa has produced an average of 93,326,820 

 lbs., of creamery butter of which about 15% was consumed in the state 

 and 85% shipped to eastern markets. These figures are exclusive of the 

 farm dairy butter almost all of which is consumed locally. 



Butter is an Iowa product. The raw material, butterfat, is a con- 

 tinuous cash "crop" from nearly every Iowa farm. Butter is made bv 

 Iowa labor, in Iowa factories which are made of Iowa building-materials 

 and equipped with Iowa owned and Iowa made machinery operated by 

 Iowa coal. Most of the manufacturer's profits remains in Iowa where it is 

 spent with Iowa merchants. 



Last year there was made in Iowa 90,915,938 lbs. of creamery butter 

 which the creameries sold for $43,969,285. Eighty-eight and one-half per 

 cent or $38,912,817 was paid to Iowa farmers for the cream and milk 

 containing the butter-fat; 9.3% or $4,059,143 was spent by the creameries 

 for Iowa labor and power, and most of the remaining $987,325 was dis- 

 tributed among Iowa farmers in the form of dividends from their cream- 

 eries. 



Oleomargarine is not an Iowa product nor does Iowa business derive 

 any benefit from its manufacture. Some hog and beef fat is used as a raw 

 material but by far the larger part of the raw material is either cotton- 

 seed oil, from the southern states or cocoanut oil from the Islands of the 

 Pacific. Most of the oleo reaching Iowa is made in factories located 

 in Illinois, Ohio and Missouri. The stock in these factories is owned 

 there, labor employed there and the laborer's salary and the stock- 

 holder's dividends spent there. 



