Also Interested In Farm Storage

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 9

Also Interested In Farm Storage

In spite of the vast storage capacity available for bulk wheat in Australia the general manager of the New Zealand Wheat Board, Mr L. C. Dunshea, said this week that it was interesting to see that there was a considerable development of bulk storage on farms. Mr Dunshea, who was a member of a delegation from the Wheat Board which recently visited Australia at the invitation of the Australian Wheat Board, said that they had had the opportunity of seeing something of the methods adopted in Australia in the handling and storing of wheat. It had been highly interesting, he said, to see the very substantial amount of storage provided by the grain elevators boards in Victoria and New South Wales and the amount of equipment in the form of drag conveyors, augers, etc., that was used in wheat handling.

But while a great deal of storage was provided by the elevators boards, he said that the cost of storage was really met by the growers with this being deducted from their payments.

In Australia, as in New Zealand on a smaller scale, the harvest was being carried out at an ever-increasing rate through the use of large header harvesters, and in spite of the vast storage capacity that was available growers were finding that they often had to wait for delivery of their wheat. Hence there was a considerable development of bulk storage on farms

to provide, in some cases, buffer storage until the wheat could find space at silos, and in other cases growers appeared to be holding their wheat in the expectation of obtaining a premium for high quality wheat delivered later. But in Australia, he said, farmers were not paid for storing wheat on farms. Many of the farm silos were of the corrugated metal type, but in some cases, under the fine weather conditions experienced there, a temporary type of open netting storage lined with a waterproof material was used.

The railways are important movers of wheat in Australia and Mr Dunshea noted that aluminium trucks, of 57 tons capacity, specially built for the wheat trade, were being introduced.

Referring to work being done in Australia on wheat quality development, Mr Dunshea said that the method employed, in many respects followed the New ealand pattern, with selections being based, among other things, on the results of baking tests for quality.