Movement Of Wheat In 1968

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 8

Movement Of Wheat In 1968

It was expected that 150,000 tons of wheat —50,000 tons more than this year—would be shifted from the South Island to the North Island next year, Mr S. W. K. Hood, wheat supply officer of the Wheat Board, told members of grain and seed merchants’ staffs, when they conferred

with officers of the board in the course of one of the open days organised by the Wheat Research Institute this week.

Mr Hood said that as there would be plenty of wheat for everybody next year they would start shipping to the North Island as soon as wheat was available for shipping. They aimed at doing this also to avoid unnecessary importation of whcst* As it appeared that Palmerston North would be supplied with local wheat for most of the year it would be closed to South Island wheat over this period and shipments would be made to Tauranga and Auckland, and the aim was to have 3000 tons a week arriving at those ports. While North Island mills favoured bulk wheat and had difficulty in handling sack wheat, there would be some wheat In sacks for export to the north, and in the case of this wheat it was likely that shipments of sacks would not be taken in less than about 5000 sacks at a time.

Mr Hood emphasised that with the volume of wheat that they would have to shift It would not be possible to move wheat exactly on the day that a grower might want to do this. He asked merchants to find out from growers when they preferred to deliver their wheat as something to work on. He hoped that they did not have- to get round to the unfortunate stage where they had to tell people to ship, but if they heard towards the end of a month a grower would not deliver until the next month, the grower concerned might end up having to wait considerably longer than this. Mr Hood said that some problems had arisen in pro-

viding the necessary rail transport for shifting wheat from an area, because of growers’ inaccurate estimates of their holdings of unsold wheat He suggested that they might get a great deal nearer the correct answer than 50 per cent if they used the formula of multiplying the radius of a silo squared by 22/7 by the height of the wheat in the silo, and the result in cubic feet should be multiplied by 481 b to the cubic foot to determine the weight of wheat involved. Mr E. R. W. Reed, assistant general manager of the board, said that this year the board would be handling 14.25 m bushels of wheat, including 3m bushels from Australia. At the busy time of the year, he said, they would be dealing with transactions involving up to 200,000 bushels of wheat a day. Mr Reed said that where growers had damaged crops which might be entitled to compensation under the wheaitgrowers’ compensation scheme, the claims for compensation should be lodged as soon as the damage was apparent.