Wheat imports from Australia

Press, 10 November 1978, Page 9

Wheat imports from Australia

For the first time since the 1975 harvest had to be supplemented, wheat is being imported into the country again. This was confirmed earlier this week by the general manager of the Wheat Board, Mr E. R. W. Reed, who said that a shipment from Australia was in process of being discharged at Auckland.

It is still expected that about 30,000 tonnes of wheat will be required to carry the country through until grain becomes available from next year’s harvest.

The Australian shipment mentioned will be one of six that is expected to be made to make up for the shortfall in local production. While the situation about wheat sowings in Canterbury has been somewhat clouded by the phenomenally wet conditions in the winter and early

spring, Mr Reed said this week reports indicated that North Island and Southland sowings would be bigger this season. Mr Reed was asked this week about remarks made by the chairman, Mr J. H. Mitchell, in his address to the 44th annual meeting of the electoral committee of United Wheatgrowers about storage payments. Mr Mitchell said that the wheatgrowers’ subsection had held talks with the board suggesting more frequent payments of the increment. The board had suggested half - monthly steps instead of monthly ones and also an extension of the increment payments by a month. These proposals had been agreed to by growers and approved by the Government and had been in operation this season.

At the. time when agreement was reached, however, there had been insufficient time to consider the sub-section’s proposals

for an alternative increment scheme and this had been held over until this year. In August the subsection had submitted a very full case to the board for an increase in the wheat storage increments. The present increment of 1.125 per cent per month of the basic price of a tonne of wheat was considered unrealistically low’, and especially when growers were endeavouring to improve standards of hygiene and also segregation of lines.

Mr Reed said this week that the board had recommended to the Government a revised scale of storage increments for next year’s crop, which would represent an increase on current rates of storage payments. Mr Mitchell also referred in his address to sampling developments observed in Australia by members of the Wheat Board on a visit there earlier in the year. The board, according to Mr Reed, had decided to obtain tw'o samplers that had been seen in Australia for evaluation by grow’ers in this country. The device was a cone, which was fixed in one of the intake or discharge pipes of a silo and which drew off a continuous sample of wheat either being loaded into a silo or being discharged from it. The grain was deposited in a receptacle and formed a sample of the line being handled. The device had been developed by the wheat, research unit of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and w'as now in use in Australia. Mr Reed said that the board was interested in having it used in various parts of the country to see

how' it could be adapted for use here. .Sampling, of course, is regarded as being a vital procedure in assessment of wheat quality, for unless a sample that is fully representative of a line of wheat is taken subsequent testing procedures will not overcome this shortcoming. Mr Mitchell said that over the past few years many growers, millers and flour users had expressed doubts about the reliability of the present wheat testing system as a measure of quality. In its annual report he said that the Wheat Board had said that it welcomed the Wheat Research Institute’s acknowledgement that its quality assessment was not as precise as it would wish and its decision to supplement the baking test with protein and kernal weight tests. The institute was testing the 1978 crop using these tests on an information only basis and the board looked forward to a more reliable method of quality testing being available for next year. Growers would fully support a reliable method of quality testing next season, said Mr Mitchell, especially if because of weather conditions thev had to sow an increased area of Karamu. Mr Mitchell said thatgrowers’ representai 1 es had also had discussions with members of the Wheat Board aboul wa\s and means of moving towards supplying improved quality milling wheal for the industry. With this aim in view the board intended to encourage growers to become more .aware of the quality requirements of the market for which they grew wheat; provide adequate “on farm” storage to allow segregation of wheat by variety and delivery, as required by mills or the

board, of higher scoring lines separately from lower scoring lines: adopt a method of sampling that would ensure that the sample submitted for test was representative of rhe full line being offered: and to avoid growing varieties, which in their area, had not shown a consistently good average bake score and acceptable milling qualities. “The relatively lowprofitability of agriculture and its poor return on capital invested, compared to urban industry, is a basic reason why there is a reluctance by producers to embark on more intensive arable and pastoral farming activities, to the benefit of the farming community and the nation.’ said Mr Mitchell.

With the high cost of producing milling wheat, it was becoming increasingly clear that strong emphasis must be given by wheat breeders to breeding both high yielding and quality varieties for New Zealand conditions. “Our wheat breeders need not only our financial support but our interest in their work, which at times must be very discouraging,” he added.

Cash cropping was a business in which large sums of money were involved and therefore it was not surprising that there was a trend towards speciiisation. Some farmers were disposing of machinery because they were moving

towards all-grass farming but farmers on cropping land were tending to increase their crops.