BIG WHEAT SURPLUS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18399, 17 May 1934, Page 4

BIG WHEAT SURPLUS

ABOUT 1,000,000 BUSHELS EARLY ESTIMATES EXCEEDED From the latest threshing returns supplied by the Government Statistician it appears that the New Zealand Wheat Purchase Board will be faced with a surplus this year of somewhere about a million bushels, says the Christchurch Press. The estimate made at the Ireginning of the season allowed for about 29 bushels an acre, but threshings so far indicate that the return will be in the vicinity of 32 bushels. Figures so far available show that up to April 26 of this year, 4,164,421 bushels have been threshed, giving a return of 32.44 bushels to the acre. At the same date last year the threshing was 6,611,805 bushels, ,an averago of 38.52 an acre. Estimates of damage by frost and hail made at the beginning of the season were unduly pessimistic, and the crop has turned out. better than was then expected. If the threshing turns out as well for the whole season as it has done up to the present, the total return from the 204,000 acres under wheat in New Zealand this year will he 9,555,000 bushels, compared with the unusually heavy return of 11,054,972 bushels last year. It is estimated that of last year’s surplus, the board still holds 400,000 bushels, and this, added to the anticipated surplus of 500,000 to 600,000 bushels this year, will bring the carryover to next season to about 1,0Q0,D00 bushels, estimating the requirements df the country at from eight to nine million bushels of milling feed and seed wheat..

Although the season has turned out so much hotter than was anticipated, there has been considerably more undergrade wheat this season than.there was last. Most mills are well stocked up, some with their full year’s supplies. The board will begin to buy the surplus on May 15.

The board dealt most successfully with the surplus last year, when a quantity of New Zealand wheat was exported, but no discussion oti what is to happen to this year’s wheat has yet taken place. It is considered in many quarters that a million bushel carryover is a reasonable safety measure against a short crop next, season.