The Wheat Research Institute.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19198, 3 January 1928, Page 10

The Wheat Research Institute.

Several messages in our columns during the past few -weeks have shown that the organisation of the Wheat Research Institute is making steady progress. The empowering legislation , passed through Parliament .with little discussion, because the proposals had ! been drawn up with care' and had been modified from time to time to meet such criticism as had been forthcoming. The Statute requires a special meeting of wheatgrowers, millers, and bakers to be convened by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, for the purpose of agreeing to the regulations to be gazetted under j the Act, and the Act cannot come into force until the gazetting of the regulations so agreed upon. This meeting was held in Christchurch on December 21st, and the regulations, after full discussion, received almost unanimous approval. It is understood, however, that some opposition to a certain clause of the regulations still lingers in one influential quarter in Auckland, but it is hoped that the spirit of mutual assistance that has carried the negotiations so far will be successful in removing this last obstacle. For the organisation of the Institute is of importance not only to those immediately interested in wheat, but to the industry of the Dominion as a whole. It is an attempt to bring into harmony for their common good sectional interests that have too often been in conflict; and it is an attempt to improve from within, by improvement in its intrinsic quality, a New Zealand product that 'has fallen behind in the world's race ' of progress. New Zealand wheat and | flour are not as good as Australian or Canadian, or at any rate are not so suitable for treatment by modem methods forced upon bakers by the introduction of machinery for mixing, dividing, and moulding the dough, by the invention and supply of compressed yeast, and by the enforcement of Arbitration Court awards that penalise the early hours of baking that were practised in days gone by. New Zealand flours will not produce a good loaf under these conditions, and farmers and millers cannot expect bakers to retain antiquated methods when recent ones are being forced on them by progress in engineering, biology, and social legislation. For

the millers and farmers it is a clear case of get on or get out. During the whole of the present season New Zealand bakers have been importing Australian and Canadian flour to blend with our local product, and have been paying up to £22 10s a ton for it, instead of the local price of £l7 10s. This fact is of immense significance. It shows that all the legislation regarding duties, and all the bargaining

respecting prices, will not avail us unless we can improve our wheat quality. The importation of even small quantities of foreign flour may give us a surplus of locally grown wheat, and this would be followed, in inevitable sequence, by low prices, diminished areas, removal of protection, floods of imported flour, and the extinction of wheatgrowing and milling as New Zealand industries. As far as we can see, the only way of escaping this final consequence is to raise the quality of New Zealand wheat to something near the level of Australian and Canadian, and since the proposed Wheat Research Institute is an organisation to that end, it is to be hoped that it will soon be in active operation.