MY COUNTRY NOTEBOOK

Otago Witness, Issue 3756, 9 March 1926, Page 70

MY COUNTRY NOTEBOOK

B\

MURIHIKU

(Specially written fob the Otago Witness.) The pervading broken weather is interfering, seriously with the glass seed harvest. Tbeie are good crops in most districts, and as it is the practice generally to thresh out of the stock, broken weather means great delay and serious annoyance to not only the farmer and the mill owner, but also to the farmer’s wife, for the practice in Otago is for the threshing crew to be kept on the farm until the weather clears sufficiently to permit of carrying on.

Not only is th« grass seed harvest delayed, but up and down Otago to-day one sees oat crops that have been out in the weather far too long—but oats in this weather is far better to be damp ip. the st.ooks that put wet into the stack.

In Otago the wheat harvest will be very late. There was little autumn-grown crop, and the spring sowing was very late. Growth has been slow, and the ripening slower still. We want a week’s hot, dry weatner, but the days are shortening, and the ground is full of moisture.

The wheat position is just a trifle obscure just now. Tne millers offer one price, the farmers demand another. Meantime there is little business doing. But the millers need the wheat to keep the mills going, and the farmer needs the money to pay his debts, so business will be done sooner or later.

The Labour Party and some city newspapers are stressing the point that the wheatgrowers last year, after agreeing to sow a certain average, deliberately refrained from doing so. Everybody conversant with the position knows that this assertion is absolutely untrue. Canterbury and North Otago farmers determined to sow ail the necessary wheat this year, but the wet autumn and early spring upset every calculation.

Of course there is no gainsaying the fact that a certain number of representative wheat growers agreed to sell their wheat at an agreed-upon price, and then, when they thought the world’s parity was going to be higher, deliberately turned down their agreement—which was certainly a moral one, even if it was not a watertight legal one. But the position to-day is that there is a free market, and all the wheat grower asks is that reasonable duties be kept on wheat and flour. The boot industry demands protection; the poultry keepers, who demand cheap fowl wheat, also want —and get—protection against Asiatic importations; and the wheat grower would not be human if he failed to ask for protection for his industry, too.

The wheat problem in New Zealand will always be a problem—just as it is in all countries where wheat is grown by farmers, and where flour, bran, and pollard are consumed by people who are not farmers. There is no easy way out. But the drop in the price of lamb and mutton will tend to throw those who have reasonable wheat ground back to wheat growing. Already there is a tendency for small sheep farmers in Otago to go in more and more for a few cows. The lamb and mutton trade is going through the deep waters this season, and one result of this depression might well be that wheat growing will be regarded more favourably. The steady progress of the dairying industry in the south is largely due to small farmers keeping two or three cows more per farm : and if meat values keep depressed, then a fair proportion of wheat growing land in South Otago which is now given over to lamb raising will go back—in small blocks on every farm—to wheat.

Once again it is the production from the dairying industry that will enable this Dominion to make a reasonable showing. The value of wool exports will be down considerably; no one yet knows just how far down lamb and mutton will go; but the fair average prices for butter and cheese, and the increase of production in the back-end of the season, tend to keep our dairy produce v export values well up to the high average of recent years.

Mr Coates says that the future of Otago Central lies in the dairying in dust ry—small, well-irrigated holdings growinr great crops of lucerne, and maintaining highproducing dairy cows. Much good work has been done at Galloway Experimental Farm to demonstrate what can be reasonably accomplished; thought it has always been a puzzle to dairy farmers why such a breed as the Red Polls should be tried out alongside a dairying breed liko the Ayrshire. It is quit© obvious that the Red Poll, as a dual-purpose beast, cannot be a success on a specialised dairy farm.

The great interest evinced in the Minister’s tour of the Central is all to the good. In the past the Public Works Department has played almost a lone hand in the development of the district. Now the policy is to be a concerted one by the three departments intimately concerned— Public Works, Agriculture, and Land. This is ns it should be. The Otago Executive of the Farmers’ Union have been giving this matter publicity for some time, as it was feared that some of the proposals involved the spending of much money: the settling of farmers on land that perhaps would never be able to make adequate return for the outlay and the consequent addition to that bulk of marginal land we already have all over New Zealand—land that only pays for fanning when prices are

very high. And meat of us realise that for a year or two we will have to be content with a low level of prices. * * * W hat is the cause of the present low values of mutton and lamb ? Some people niake all sorts of mysterious reference to hidden forces at work, but the one reason is an over supply on the London market. There was a big carry-over of last season’s lamb by all sorts of speculators; there were accumulations of early lamb in Australia, held up by the shipping strike—this Australan lamb got home before the held-over surplus was worked off. Then the flush of New Zealand supply came heaped on top of all the meat already in London. Until these nuge stocks in London are liquidated—and they can only be moved at heavy losses to those holding—local prices cannot advance. No one knows yet whether the bottom has been reached. Those best qualified to judge are o? the opinion that prices are still inclined to fall.