WHEAT GROWERS DISSATISFIED

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 23, 26 January 1918, Page 6

WHEAT GROWERS DISSATISFIED

"There is some dissatisfaction at the fact that the North Island farmers are to get fpurpence a bushel more for their wheat than the Southern growers, a sum equal, I suppose, to the average cost of importing :he Southern wheat to northern ports," writes "Agricola" in this week's' South Island notes in' the Farmers' Union Advocate. "It is felt down here that the North Island man is being spoon-fed all the time, and that the Government should itself have taken the extra money for the wheat rather than hand it over to the farmers. If is considered by many that the North Island has .the advantage of the South Island in many ways, and there is a strong movement on foot to push the claims ofthe South a littie more than has been the case in the past. I notice that when the Prime Minister was in the southern districts looking at the Gladbrook Estate a fow days ago, some of the farmers down there pressed for a State farm. That is one of the sore points with us, the fact that the North has help in that way which is^ denied to us. And now it comes as a bit of » surprise to find that the North Island wheat-grower is to get something over sis shillings a bushel for his wheat, which cannot be as good as ours, while we have to be content with 5s lOd a bushel, though we have for 'years borne the heat and the burden of growing wheat for our northern cousins, often at a loss, while they went in for sheep, wool, and dairy produce that was more remunerative, less laborious, and not so worrying. One can find many men. who have grown rich out of the former products, but the men who havo made fortunes out of growing wheat are few. and far between." ;