WHEAT AND FLOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17371, 19 January 1920, Page 4

WHEAT AND FLOUR.

The agreement reached at the Christchurch. conference between the Government and the wheatgrowers of the Dominion is concerned with only one aspect of the . supply of breadstuff for the Dominion. It fixes the price at which milling wheat, harvested during the next few weeks, will be sold to the Wheat Board for distribution to millers, but tlje other and more important questions suggested by Mr- Massey for its consideration were postponed. Last season a total of 6,567,629 bushels were threshed from 208,030 acres. This season the area sown in wheat is only 142,960 acres, the lowest since 1876, and from this area Mr. Massey estimates a total yield of 4,000,000 bushels. In addition, there are 500,000 bushels remaining from last year's stocks and 2,000,000 bushels awaiting shipment in Australia, the latter being the balance of the purchase made in July, 1918. The total supply up to the beginning of the next harvest is therefore 9,500,000 bushels, which is barely sufficient for the year's requirements. The yield from the present harvest ?.s to be bought by the Government on the basis of 7s 3d a bushel, compared with 6s 6d last season and 5s 10d in 1918. An important consideration on which Mr. Massey has laid emphasis is that the average cost of the year's supply of breadstuffs will be less than is suggested by the rate of 7s 3d a bushel for wheat. The 1918 contract with the Australian Wheat Board secured 4,000,000 bushels at 5s 7id a bushel, for delivery within two years, free of interest, insurance, and storage charges, and previous . shipments have been landed at a cost of about 6s 5d a bushel. Thus with the surplus from last season, more than one-third of the year's wheat will be available at about the 1919 prices. Nevertheless, the cost of wheat and flour will be greater than it was last year. Mr. Massey apparently contemplates a continuance ' of the subsidy to millers, which already costs' £213,000 a year, though* he does not suggest that the whole difference between the fixed price and the actual cost of production and manufacture should still be borne by the Consolidated "Fund. Whatever policy the Government adopts, there should be an early and explicit statement of its decisions a.nd the reasons on «which they are based. There should certainly not be a repetition of last t year's strange procedure, as. a result

of which a scheme for, a' reduction in the price of f flour, the fixing of prides,'and: the payment of the • subsidy to millers, : was' brought into operation weeks before I any official announcement of the Government's plans. - The essential problem set before tho conference still awaits a solution. On ; Mn/'Massey's figures, the Dominion's reserves : > of wheat will-be'/exhausted i before the/1021 harvest, and provision for the future depends either on an adequate production in New Zealand or a helpless reliance on imported '? supplies. ;/ Mr. Massey favours/'the; policy of ';' independence, and in summoning' the conference suggested % ■ an arrangement for three years by. -^lich, wheatgrowers will be able, given average seasons, to supply the Dominion's growing requirements. The effort to translate that proposal into practical , terms must be' renewed ; and pressed to a satisfactory conclusion.