REVISED WHEAT PRICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25851, 23 May 1945, Page 3

REVISED WHEAT PRICE

VALUE OF ACREAGE CONCESSION (Contributed by the New Zealand Flourmillers’ Society) The revised wheat price should remove the disinclination or objection of farmers to extend their acreages in the current planting. It may be conceded that more direct and speedier methods of arriving at this point could have been adopted; but it can be claimed that in all the long record of negotiations in the last four or five years farmers are now placed in a better position than ever before to respond to the appeal. v The minimum area to secure the full price of 7s Id a bushel has been reduced from 250,000 acres to 235,000. On the surface, this concession may not appear much; but it has to be considered in conjunction with the fact that every 5000 acres sown additional to 200,000 acres will earn a penny a bushel towards the 7s Id maximum, March basis, for Tuscan. An area of 220,000 acres, as an instance, would be paid for at the rate of 6s 10d on the basis mentioned, and another 15,000 acres would raise the return to the maximum of 7s Id. The return in its graduations even, to the full price gives the position more substance and much less shadow than previously in the war.

When the penny a month increment for later delivery months is considered, the objective shotild surely not be found irksome. Past records can be quoted as bearing on this aspect. On many occasions the country has voluntarily grown to 350,000 acres, when there was no national emergency, when there was no shipping hold-up, when wheat was available from overseas countries in limitless quantities if required, and when there was little of the machinery that now reduces wheatgrowing from the dangers of damage, such as took heavy toll before the days of the mechanical harvester.

The farmer can now, more cheerfully embark on the extension of his wheat acreage—or rather the nonwheatgrowing farmer can do so, as he is assured of a return more in conformity with that from his other operations if he responds to the appeal. The wheat is needed as never before.