LOWER PRICE FOR YIELDER

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 5

LOWER PRICE FOR YIELDER

ENCROACHMENT ON CROSS 7 AREAS

The announcement of the reduction in the price of Yielder wheat for next season was made by the Minister without any explanation, but the reasson is undoubtedly that the inroads made by Yielder into Cross 7 country, particularly in South Canterbury, have brought the need for some discouragement of its spread. In this the authorities who fix wheat prices simply follow the line taken by the millers in the days of free trade—when they did not like a variety, they lowered the price. Yielder was one of the wheats encouraged during and just after the war when shipping was a very serious problem, and it was necessary for this country to make a genuine attempt to have more wheat grown. The defects of Yielder were then accepted in view of its higher yield. It is of considerably poorer baking quality than Cross 7. for breadmaking, and has the added very strong disadvantage to millers that it has an extraction rate about 4 per cent, below Cross 7. That means that for every 100 tons of wheat gristed, it returns 4 tons less flour than Cross 7, and this characteristic is maintained even when it is blended with higher extraction wheats. Yielder is Yeally a feed wheat, and has a valuable place for that purpose in quantities which must obviously be . It has one advantage other than its higher yield, in that it is well regarded by some millers as a biscuitmaking wheat. Biscuit flours need to be weaker than bread flours, and Yielder does well in this section of the trade. Nevertheless, there is a limited outlet for it even here, because only about 5 per cent, of flour used in New Zealand is of biscuit type.

Yielder has returned fairly consistently figures about 8.8 per cent, higher than Cross 7 for yield, or somewhere about four bushels to the acre. Whether with wheat at Ils a bushel the 2d discount now placed against Yielder will discourage the South Canterbury growers is a question. On an average yield of 40 bushels, Cross 7 will return £22 an acre, and on an average of 44 bushels, Yielder will return £23 16s Bd, so that Yielder still shows a better' return.

Small discounts successfully in the past knocked our poor wheats, among which Victor, Major and Webb’s Harvester come to mind, but wheat in those times was worth about half of its present price, or less. Hilgendorf Premium The shilling premium on Hilgendorf appears so far to have had almost as little effect on increasing the area of this very good milling and baking wheat. It is having some support on Marlborough, where it appears to do well, but in other growing districts it has not become popular, possibly because the premium is not big enough, or more likely, because the announcements of the premium usually come too late in the year to have much effect. It is a reasonably good yielder, but seems to have been rather an uncertain performer. Its chief defect appears to be that if it is left past the header ripe stage, it is inclined to straggle and look messy. It seems to be rather sensitive to the country it grows on, and when it is unhappy, it performs really badly. The whole wheat, flour and bread industry is now very thoroughly tied up in controls, and* whatever merits control may have, it lacks the flexibility of open trading, in which inefficient wheats rapidly disappeared when it was found that there was no market for them. The device of differential prices for different varieties according to their value to the industry is- a valuable adaptation of the old free trade principle, but could be used with more forcefulness than has been the case so far. The rising fertility of so much of the medium and light soils of New Zealand will eventually need to be cashed through crops, of which wheat will certainly remain the leader, but it will also bring the need for new wheats. As new varieties come from the breeders there will be need for premiums to encourage them and discounts to discourage the outmoded ones, and a more vigorous policy of differential prices could hasten greatly the improvement in bread quality.