WHEAT SHORTAGE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21632, 8 February 1945, Page 6

WHEAT SHORTAGE

STOCK FEED NEEDS BIG SHEEP LOSS LIKELY MINISTER ASSAILED (10 am.) ■ CANBERRA, Feb. 8. jEhere ■will not be enough wheat to feed stock in Australia and many thousands of sheep in the drought areas must die. This has been admitted by the Federal Minister for Commerce and Agriculture, Mr. W. J. Scully, who said it was one of the misfortunes of a drought of unprecedented gravity. “There is not enough wheat in Australia .to provide stock-feed wheat at the rate at which it has been consumed in the past six months,” he said, “and there is not shipping to bring It to Australia from other countries,” Mr. Scully added. “It has never been the practice in previous droughts to feed wheat to flock sheep, but wheat is now in demand because the subsidy has made it a cheap substitute fodder. Stock-feed wheat is now being made available at the rate., of <4-3,000.000 bushels yearly to priority groups—dairying, pigs, poultry and stud sheep." 70,000,000 Bushels a Year The consumption of stock feed over the past' six months was at the rate of 70,000,000 bushel's yearly, compared with less than 10,000,000 bushels a year 'previously. About half that 70,000,000 bushels was for flock sheep and it had been impossible to keep this going. Mr. Scully’s calamitous lack of foresight and blind complacency has helped the drought to disorganise the food supply of the Commonwealth,” says the Sydney Sun in a trenchant leading article. “Mr. Scully told us that there was so much meat that there need be no rationing and that more eggs were produced in Australia this year than ever before. Our meat ration, small as it was, is to be further cut, eggs are to be rationed and thousands of sheep must die. The only solution to prevent a continual recurrence of these blunders is a Ministry of Food, which shall not be headed .by Mr. Scully, and its cooperation with experts (not departmental experts) who are growing the food.”

The Sydney Morning Herald comments: “Mr. Scully’s belated acknowledgment of a wheat shortage is too tragic to be accepted philosophically. Many will wish his portfolio had been among those affected by last week’s Cabinet changes.”