The Press Wednesday, December 16, 1925. The Wheat Problem.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18566, 16 December 1925, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, December 16, 1925. The Wheat Problem.

The meeting which is to be held to-day, under the auspices of the A. and P. Association, to discuss wheat control, is the result of a very general discontent amongst wheat-growers resulting from the likelihood that they will receive for their grain this season much less than the import parity. So far as the public interest is concerned, the important thing is to keep the industry going, and this for reasons of the greatest weight. If the industry were abandoned and tve had to import our breadstuffs, the cost would probably never be less than 2& millions sterling and very easily could be, and in some seasons certainly would be, over 4 millions. And most of this would be dead loss, since it would mean the leaving unused the wheat-producing possibilities of a great area of land and the scrapping or diversion to less profitable ends of a great deal of machinery and labour. Not only would the ending of the industry be a blow to the country's economic organisation; it would expose us to severe additional loss in those years in which imported wheat would be very dear. Now, the industry obviously cannot be kept going without assistance, and the question is, what shape ought that assistance to take? Many people believe that the solution of the difficulty is a continuance of Government control and fixed prices, and we have lately seen that some people believe that the Government can really guarantee profitable prices for years ahead, despite the fact that nothing is more certain than that control cannot be more than a year-to-year arrangement. Since it began, the policy of controlled prices, while it may not have injured the millers, has done immeasurably more harm than good to the wheat-growers. It has given them nothing when wheat has been cheap; it has robbed them when wheat has been scarce.

It is time that the wheat-growers embraced the fact that they are entitled to an effective and permanent protection and that they can successfully fight for it if they try. Some of the best-known- representatives of rural interests fear, however, that this kind of protection cannot be had. Mr G. W. Leadley, for example, in a'letter we print to-day, says that if the wheatgrowing industry is to survive, it " must Lave a measure of control in " the form of protection, but that we "cannot hope to receive, and we have "no right to ask for that protection " unless we are prepared to deliver the " goods in the shape of a sufficient "supply for the Dominion's growing u requirements." Why cannot farmers hope to receive what is granted—what has long been conceded —to producers of other things which, in comparison with wheat, are of no importance at all? Why must farmers be required to give, in return for tariff protection, a guarantee that they will supply all the Dominion's requirements, when no other kind of producer is asked for such a guarantee? Several of our secondary industries which enjoy protection at the rate of 25, 30, and 40 per cent do not supply more than the smaller part of the national requirements. On what ground can the farmers be denied a privilege freely granted to less necessary people? Unless New Zealand decides for a Freetrade policy the wheat-grower and the miller can each of them demand, to receive, effective protection. If the millers were to demand a duty of £7 a ton on. wheat, and wheat-growers a duty of half a crown a bushel, they would be asking no more than is" received by many local manufacturers, and allowed to these without a murmur from the public. Farmers must realise that it is time they stood up for their rights as firmly as more wide-awake people have done. In the meantime,' there is not the slightest reason why to-day's meeting should not ask the Government to guarantee a much higher price than fa's sd. No question of "honouring a contract" can arise, because the individual grower has made no contract; and in any case no consideration of any kind has passed between the growers and the Government, and the farmers may fairly ask tho Government to show as much concern for them as it has shown for other classes of the community.