FINAL PAYMENT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 40, 27 November 1940, Page 7

FINAL PAYMENT

RETURN FOR 1940 WHEAT CROP.

ABOUT £84,000 EXPECTED EARLY

(Special to the “Guardian”) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day

It is expected that the final payment on the 1940 wheat crop amounting to 3d a bushel will be made fairly soon now. There has been no official intimation as to- when the payment will ne made, but farmers hope that it will be made about the middle of December, as was the case last year. The final payment this year should be about £84,000, against £55,800 paid out last year. Up.to yesterday, the Wheat Committee had handled 0,726,657 bushels of New Zealand wheat, in addition to imports from Australia. It is probable that there is still a little more to come in, and the final payment should therefore he more than £84,000. There seems to he an impression in some quarters that the Government Statistician’s estimate, published recently, of 244,000 acres as the area in wheat for the coming harvest, was rather ' conservative, and there are good hopes that tlie crop will ultimately prove to be little short of the 260,000 acres sown to wheat last year. There was every prospect, of a big crop this as much land, had been prepared for spring sowing, but the exceedingly, unfavourable spring made sowing impossible in many areas, it will be disappointing to many farmers that they were not able to assist in producing the full requirements of the Dominion in wheat, but most of the land lias been very usefully employed in growing crops of peas and barley. Peas are especially valuable to Great Britain at present.

New Zealand requires about 9,000,000 bushels of wheat every year for all purposes, and about 7,000,000 bushels for milling. To he safe, there should he about 300,000 acres in wheat. '