PRODUCTION OF WHEAT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27047, 23 May 1953, Page 9

PRODUCTION OF WHEAT

HIGHER PRICE HELD NECESSARY

ADDRESS TO FARMERS’ CONFERENCE

“To have flour for sufficient bread New Zealand has to go without £7,000.000 worth of imports of other kinds.” said the chairman (Mr G. A. Nutt) in his report to the annual conference of the agriculture section of North Canterbury Federated Farmers yesterday. This was equivalent to going without more than 26,000 10norsepower cays, he said. “In December the Dominion agriculture council of Federated Farmers organised an approach to the Government, and together with the United Wheatgrowers, the New Zealand Flourmillers’ Society, and the New Zealand Flour Merchants' Federation, we jointly suggested to the Government that a price of at least 15s a bushel should be paid as a means of securing a substantial increase in the area of wheat and as a means of securing a higher output from arable farming as a whole, ’ Mr Nutt said.

“It would have paid handsomely, one would have thought, to have paid anything up to 18s 4d—the average cost of landing imported wheat—or even more than this, and saved a substantial portion of the £7,000,000 in exchange needed to pay for imports last year. “There may be a number of reasons behind the Government’s determination to hold the price close to the familiar cost structure basis. But to those of us who put the case to the Prime Minister (Mr Holland), One of the main reasons appears to be this: the Government felt that a substantial rise granted for wheat would be misunderstood or misconstrued by public

opinion in general, and by those groups seeking rises in salaries or wages, or increased margins in manufactured or imported articles. “I feel, therefore, that this outstanding problem of Canterbury farming is not going to be met until public opinion is fully aware what this policy of stabilisation for wheat is costing everyone in the Dominion.” Much had been heard in recent months about New Zealand’s third mil-

lion of population, and on the great and urgent need to increase farm production. Mr Nutt said. Yet to ahyone who had been recently in the United States, Canada, or England arable farming in New Zealand appeared rundown and neglected. With heavy capital requirements for housing of farm labour and for mechanisation, more and more arable farmers were being forced into sheepfarming, where capital requirements were less substantial. There was a feeling of frustration among farmers today. “Compared with farming in countries like England and the United States, arable farming here in the event of a crisis is under-manned, under-housed and under-equipped, and it is a tragedy that an arable province like Canterbury should be forced into becoming grassland-minded at a time of world food shortage,” Mr Nutt said.

Remits Approved A remit proposing that, “as New Zealand is becoming too dependent on Australia for wheat and potatoes, Federated Farmers should approach the Government with a view to making New Zealand self-supporting in these commodities,” was moved by Mr D. Goode (Waimairi), and approved. A further remit, that “the present price of wheat will not encourage the growing of any additional acreage of wheat under present conditions,” was also adopted. The conference agreed that South Island growers should receive the same price for wheat as those in the Nortn Island. The conference rejected a remit, moved by Mr G. H. Blair (Yaldhurst), and suggesting the establishment of a wheat board on similar lines to those of the New Zealand Potato Board