204 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



successful factory in the State receives two million pounds of milk and 

 pays for it an average price of $1.08. The difference between these 

 factories is that the larger one is not in a dairy district and the other 

 one is, hence, the cost of getting the milk to the factory is less in the 

 one case than in the other. The prices paid by other cheese factories 

 range down as low as 68 cents per hundred pounds. 



The average production of these thirty-one cheese factories which 

 have reported appears, therefore, to be about sixty-five thousand eight 

 hundred pounds of cheese per annum, and on this basis the forty-three 

 cheese factories now in operation in the State would make approximately 

 three million pounds of cheese, worth perhaps three hundred thousand 

 dollars. From the foregoing figures, it will be seen at once that the 

 cheese business in Iowa is not a very great amount, and probably so 

 long as conditions remain the same as they are now. the cheese business 

 will continue to be of little importance in the State. The relative prices 

 paid per hundred pounds of milk by cheese factories and creameries 

 may be a matter of some interest to those who are unable to account 

 for the small number of cheese factories in the State. A certain Dela- 

 ware county creamery, making 165.000 pounds of butter last year, paid 

 its patrons $1.01 per hundred pounds of milk. It is evident that a 

 cheese factory which could only pay an average price of 85 cents per 

 hundred pounds of milk could not exist in that community and suc- 

 cessfully compete with the creamery. The creameries of Bremer 

 county last year paid an average price of 82 cents per hundred pounds 

 of milk. No cheese factory could compete with these creameries unless 

 it were able to pay a considerable amount per hundred more than the 

 creameries are paying. It is evident that the expense of getting the 

 milk to the creamery will not be more than that of transporting the 

 milk to a cheese factory, and that the skimmed milk will be of much 

 greater value than the whey which the farmer gets back. It is true, 

 however, that other creameries that are not so successfully operated as 

 the one with which the above comparisons are made have not been able 

 to pay as much as the creamer:es mentioned above, and in these locali- 

 ties a cheese factory could easily compete with the creameries. 



The cheese business does not seem to be adapted to all localities 

 where milk can be easily and cheaply produced. Every northern state, 

 with the exce.icion of those in the semi-arid district of the Middle West. 

 is a large producer of butter, but the same is not at all true in regard 

 to cheese production. Nearly all the cheese is made in the states of 

 New York and Wisconsin, and Iowa with its small number of cheese 

 factories is given sixth place in cheese production by the national census 

 of 1900. There are communities in Iowa where large and successful 

 cheese factories are in operation, so that it is conclusively proven by 

 them that cheese can be profitably made in Iowa but it is doubtless true 

 that so long as the profits in butter making are equal to those of cheese 

 making, the number of cheese factories in this State will be relatively 

 small, for the reason that the making of butter and the utilization of 

 ihe skimmed milk is more to the taste of the stock raising farmer than 

 the making of cheese and the use of whey. 



