WHEATGROWING IN N.Z.

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25446, 18 March 1948, Page 6

WHEATGROWING IN N.Z.

The acreage of wheat grown in New Zealand last year was the lowest since 1875, said Dr. O. H. Frankel, chief executive officer of the Wheat Research Institute, in an address at the Risingholme Community Centre. Until the middle 1930’5, New Zealand had produced approximately enough wheat for internal consumption, with occasional exportable surpluses. !n New Zealand, continued Dr. Frankel, only a relatively small proportion of any farm grew wheat, and this was a very variable proportion, decreasing ? s fat lamb prices increased. Wheatgrowing was mainly carried on in the South Island, particularly in the Canterbury and North Otago areas where, because of the climate, pastures were not as permanent as in the North Island, but-where a wide range of soil types and minor variations in climate were encountered. During the last 10 years, the average wheat acreage for the-Dominion was 214,000 acres. What could be regarded as a normal acreage was 250,000 acres. Now, 350,000 acres were required to supply the Dominion 1 ’s needs for both human population and poultry. At present, there was a temporary world shortage of wheat, but major surpluses existed in dollar area countries. Hence the British Government had appealed to New Zealand to be as self-supporting as possible. Although the header harvester had lessened the work of actual harvesting, wheat growing was still more troublesome than some other types of'farming, with a difficult peak period during the harvesK added Dr. Frankel.