FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IV. 196 



RAILWAY BUTTER SHIPMENTS. 



The tables of railway butter shipments represent the shipments 

 of butter to points outside the State, and are for the year ending 

 September 30, 1903. Creamery butter statistics printed in this report 

 are for the year ending July 1, 1903. The creamery butter figures are 

 partly estimated from the reports of creameries so far as received. The 

 railway butter shipments are reports direct from the railroads of the 

 State. The latter reports are, therefore, considered very accurate, and 

 the former somewhat subject to inaccuracy. Particularly this year, 

 the creamery butter figures are low on account of the closing of so 

 large a number of creameries, which materially affects the estimate of 

 the total product for the State. 



Not all the butter here reported is made in Iowa. It is true that 

 we do not import butter for consumption, but considerable quantities of 

 low grade butter are annually imported to be made into renovated 

 butter or resold outside the State. Sioux City, in Woodbury county, 

 has a large renovated butter factory and is also a center for the col- 

 lection of packing stock and renovated butter stock. Naturally, a large 

 part of this butter comes from South Dakota and Nebraska. These 

 facts and the fact that Sioux City also has the largest creamery in the 

 State, account for the great increase in the total butter shipped from 

 Woodbury county. A like thing is true in regard to Polk county, 

 which has three renovated butter factories and two large creameries, 

 located in the city of Des Moines. Clayton and Dickinson counties, 

 showing large gains in butter shipments, each have renovated butter 

 factories. The stock from which renovated butter is made comes 

 largely from outside the State, and so the total shipments from these 

 counties do not represent at all the amount of butter made in the 

 counties. 



The shipping of cream to the larger plants is accountable for some 

 of the changes in county totals. It therefore happens that the figures 

 in scarcely a single case represent even approximately the amount of 

 butter produced in a county and shipped from it. 



This department is under great obligations to the railways of the 

 State that have made reports of butter shipments at considerable ex- 

 pense of time and effort. 



