AUSTRALIAN WHEAT

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21436, 30 March 1935, Page 20

AUSTRALIAN WHEAT

rehabilitating the INDUSTRY FAR-REACHING proposals Federal assistance to the wheat industry through the application of a home-consumption price for flour, and the adoption of a compulsory marketing scheme for Australian wheat, provided it be approved of by the majority of the wheat fanners of each of the three wheat-exporting states, are recommended by the Royal commission on the wheat, flour, and bread industries, in its second and final icport. As a means of establishing a homeconsumption price the commission recommends an excise duty on flour, used within the Commonwealth, or some other means. The commission also recommends Commonwealth action to facilitate adjustment of debts within the wheat industry, and also makes numerous recommendations with regard to wheat quality, area of cropping,' research work, machinery, standardisation. and various other subject?. Following the first report, the federal Government made available a sum of £4.000,000 for allocation, but not wholly on the lines recommended by the commission. , Jn its latest report, which covers 256 printed pages of foolscap size the commission reviews the history or the wheat industry over the last century, reports on present conditions of production and marketing, and analyses future possibilities. The financial condition of the industry is reviewed also. , . .. . In the course of the report it is stated that the principle of protecting the home producer of primary products has been adopted as a cardinal point in the policy of many governments. Until there is a reversal of these policies there will be no reason to expect that the countries concerned will be importers, except when their local hai - vests fail. There is a definite need for reconstruction of the Australian industry as it now exists. The reorganisation must lead to a natural restriction in acreage by the abandonment of wheal growing in unsuitable areas. Broadly speaking, the survey shows that about half the wheat growers of the Commonwealth were producing the grain at a cost of 3s 6d a bushel on a f.o.r. ports basis, including interest, in June, 1934. Wheat Farmers' Debt For the purposes of its investigations the commission defined a "wheat grower" as a man who annually planlf more than 100 acres under wheat, and who obtains the major part of hi:' livelihood from growing this crop. There are, the commission states, between 60,000 and 70,000 growers of wheat in Australia, of whom between 40,000 and 45,000 corne within this definition. It is estimated that the total debt of the wheat growers of Australia amounts to about £151,000.000. Of this sum approximately £37,000,000 is due to private mortgagees, about £33,000,000 to joint stock banks, roughly, £30,000.000 to Government organisations (other than State banks), about £20,000,000 to State banks and £14.000,000 to trustee, assurance, and other finance companies. The sum due to unsecured or partly unsecured creditors is. in round figures, £15,000.000. On a hypothetical sheep carrying basis

the total value of the assets in stock, machinery, and land, can be computed tentatively at about £136,000,000 under existing conditions. On the subject of farm debt adjustment, the Commission recommends that during the period of reconstruction the Commonwealth Government, with the full co-operation of the State Governments, shall provide machinery whereby voluntary schemes of arrangement or compositions between creditors and debtor farmers are encouraged and facilitated; that, failing voluntary agreement, the debtor or arcreditor shall h;ive the right to apply to a specially constituted authority for the examination of the circumstances of the individual case; that this authority shall take the form of a court presided over by a judge, assisted by wellqualified advisers.