DOMINION WHEAT LANDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 21, 25 January 1934, Page 6

DOMINION WHEAT LANDS.

Wheat-growers are not wholly responsible for having supplied New Zealand last year with more than it could use. A favourable season helped them to exceed all estimates, and the season is one of the uncertainties which reduces crop estimates to little more than a guess. Had the area sown been the same as in the previous year the Dominion •would still have had a surplus; with 34,000 additional acres planted the surplus was swelled, but the root of the trouble was the abundant harvest. On the basis of the 1932 yield New Zealand's area of 300,000 acres reaped last autumn would have come short of requirements, but there was no justification for using 1932 as a basis, because it was an abnormal year. Farmers must pay more attention to averages, and the Prime Minister seems to realise this when he expresses the opinion that the country has gone too far in extending its wheat areas. Taking a survey of the past ten years, it appears that 250,000 acres is a safe limit, and that 50,000 acres which were planted last year should go out of cultivation, or be turned to other use. Five years ago, when the Dominion's market was comfortably supplied, the area under wheat was 255,300 acres. It is a costly policy, particularly in a time like the present, to produce more than can. be consumed within the country, for the surplus has to be sold abroad at the world's price, which means a heavy loss to New Zealand on every bushel shipped. For the past season the loss must have amounted to nearly 2/6 a bushel on the whole quantity exported, and it fell on the community as a whole, not upon the wheatgrower, for he receives a guaranteed price. He is in a sheltered position, and is immune from the competition which producers generally have to meet. While the community is called upon to stand the cost of a guarantee of this kind, it should have some control over yield. It is not a case of saving the grower from his own mistakes, for he is saved already by the guarantee; it is a matter of balancing demand and supply as closely as possible.