WHEAT ACREAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 10

WHEAT ACREAGE

An official estimate of the area sown in wheat for the 1933-34 season places it at 294,500 acres, compared with 305,924 acres in 1932-33, a decrease of 11,500 acres in round figures. It is not possible to estimate what decrease in the harvest may be expected from this shrinkage. Too many factors operate, including the entirely incalculable one of weather conditions. Last year, for instance, a wholly favourable season resulted in a yield of 2,000,000 bushels in excess of domestic requirements. The year before, with only 33.775 acres less under crop the yield was nearly 4,500,000 bushels less than in 1932-3*3, and wheat had to be imported to make good a deficiency in the domestic supply. Supposing a yield per acre comparable with that harvested ' last year should be obtained again, the huge surplus which has had to be handled will not be very seriously reduced. ' Normally the position should have been more discouraging to wheat-growing than it has proved. All that was required for home consumption commanded the artificial price assured by the sliding scale duties. The amount exported naturally had to be sold for any return that could be obtained, and a substantial carry-over remains to complicate the position if, as is quite likely, more wheat than the domestic market requires is threshed at the coming harvest. These circumstances naturally reduce the return to the grower below the level aimed at in the scheme of sliding scale duties. That the shrinkage in planting should have been so comparatively small, in face of such circumstances, indicates how favourably the grower must be situated compared with other primary producers. Even though results in the past year have been considerably below the expectations created by the duties, wheatgrowing is still sufficiently pampered to keep farmers faithful to it in preference to other forms of production which must bear the full weight of world competition.