PRICE OF BREAD AND WHEAT SCARCITY

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 49, 26 February 1917, Page 8

PRICE OF BREAD AND WHEAT SCARCITY

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The Board of Trade are inviting information on this problem. Here are a few crumbs for them *to go on with. No further away than Sydney, New South Wales, say within 1200 miles of Wellington, there are 9,000,000 sacks of wheat, for which the owners can find no outlet. Surely commonsense would suggest that New Zealand should be a customer for some of this surplus, so thait not one acre of land need be used in New Zealand while the war lasts for growing wheat. The land would be much better employed growing meat, of which there is likely to be a great shortage in the near future. The Government would be wise, in the face of the surplus in Australia, in forbidding the growing of wheat in New Zealand until we have helped our neighbours to get rid of what is now only rotting at their railway stations. There is no doubt that this Australian wheat could be bought at is 6d per bushel f.o.b. Then what occasion is there for guaranteeing New Zealand growers 5s 6d? The Victorian harvest, too, is estimated at 43,000,000 bushels. ' Or,' to put it another way, it would take the New South Wales stateowned fleet seven years to carry the last wheat harvest to England, and another five to carry the Victorian.—l am, etc., WASTE NOT. 24th February.