A LESSON FROM JOSEPH

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 103, 12 April 1933, Page 12

A LESSON FROM JOSEPH

NATIONAL STORE OF WHEAT. SCHEME TO RAISE PRICES. While New Zealand is concerned chiefly with dairy produce, frozen meat and wool, it is nevertheless interesting to read of the scheme for a national store of wheat as one means of raising world prices, as outlined by Mr J. F. Darling, a director of the Midland Bank, in the “National Review.” Mr Darling heads his article “A Lesson from Joseph,” and takes as his “text” Genesis 41, verses 48 and 56:— “And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egj-pt, and laid up the food in the cities. . . . And the famine was over all the face of the earth, and Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold.” Britain, the world’s largest importer of wheat, consumes annually, he states, approximately 240,000,000 bushels, of which we produce ourselves less than the odd 40,000,000. Suggestions have been made that we should keep a store of wheat equal to one year’s consumption. “But the proposal I now venture to put forward is that in. addition .... we should take advantage of the present abnormally low price to lay in a store of hai'd, durable wheat with the deliberate object of raising the price of wheat, and through wheat the price of commodities generally, as a means to world recovery. . . . “If we were to sell so much of our gold and buy wheat with it the actual purchase of our store of wheat need not cost the taxpayers anything provided the currency was not contracted m consequence. “Gold is probably at about its top price, as wheat is at its bottom, and to swap the one for the other would constitute a deal well worth the attention of our modern Joseph. To illustrate: If we were to purchase, say, 100,000,000 bushels of wheat at 50 cents a bushel it could be paid for by disposing of £10,000,000 of our gold; if at 60 cents £12,000,000, and so on. With so many nations off gold its future is somewhat precarious. The future of wheat at 50 or 60 cents a bushel seems secure, for at that price it is below production cost. “But if in consequence of our purchases wheat rose until ‘dollar wheat’ was in sight we could hold our hand in buying, having accomplished one objective, a material rise in the price of wheat, with its attendant rise in prices generally.” To erect elevators to contain 100,000,000 bushels of wheat, with up-to-date facilities for handling it, would cost approximately £10,000,000. A National Wheatholding Corporation could be formed under Government auspices and the capital raised under Government guarantee at per cent, per annum. Good hard wheat keeps for several years, but ultimately it would have to be turned over —the old wheat sold and new wheat substituted.