It seems a shame to take such a unique rock only found here and put it in a museum. 

Surely we should stop exploiting our natural treasures and leave them where they are for their own sake. 

We don’t need to see them for them to have value.

So much for Landcare.

I read with interest your article on the looming shortage of Australian butter.

Being a retired dairy technologist and having made many thousands of tons of butter, I find it hard to believe we are now looking at importing this product to meet demand.

The price of butter has increased around 30 per cent this year.

This makes it difficult for big users such as bakeries to purchase supplies. 

Butter is superior to substitutes.

However, these will need to be used if butter is too expensive or is not available.

Lack of vision by governments with moves such as deregulation and underestimating the demand on dairy products by other countries will cause us all to pay more in the future.

If the price increase flowed in part to the farmer there would be some real benefit.

Farmers continue to leave the industry and looking back in history nearly all towns had a dairy factory, for example Bowral, Moss Vale, Robertson, Goulburn and near the coast – Dapto, Albion Park, Jamberoo, Gerringong, Berry and Nowra.

All have closed their doors except Berry factory, chich handles a small amount of milk for packaging.

While all industries go through change, over the years the involvement of people like politicians who are not familiar with farming have brought on issues such as butter shortages, poor payments to farmers resulting in them exiting the industry and factory closures.

In the future it will be difficult to rectify past decisions.

One thing is certain, we will pay more for many dairy products.