FENCING WIRE PROBLEM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6443, 7 November 1947, Page 5

FENCING WIRE PROBLEM

SOLUTION NOT IN SIGHT END OF LEND-LEASE SUPPLIES Substantial supplies of fencing and baling wire to relieve the grave shortage which has been worrying the farmers of New Zealand for nearly five years are nowhere in sight. By retarding the breaking in of new ground, the dearth of fencing wire is a major obstacle in the drive for increased production. With the removal of the Government subsidy, a tiny shipment of English baling wire expected shortly is being quoted by one firm at £B6 a ton, compared with £55 at the subsidised rate and £2O before the war. “The supply of wire has never been more acute than it is at present,” the president of the Fencing Materials Association of Auckland, Mr F. J. Cullen, told a Herald representative recently. Lend-lease supplies which New Zealand received from the United States during the war had come to an end. The return to the land of ex-servicemen and the Government’s land development programme, combined with long-delayed fencing projects, had created an unprecedented demand.

Probably only a third of the average annual importation during the last few years of the war and about a quarter of the average importations for the three years before the war had arrived from the United Kingdom in 1946, continued Mr Cullen. Owing to export embargoes it was now not anticipated that Canada would be able to supply New Zealand with any wire during 1947 or for the first half of 1948.

Australia might have no supplies of galvanised wire until well on in 1949. Over the next few months it was likely that Czechoslovakia would be supplying about a third of the Dominions’ normal requirements of baling wire. The first shipment should arrive by December. A small quantity of barbed wire was expected from Belgium in the near future. It was still hoped to obtain wire from America through the Washington representative of the Department of Industries and Commerce, but the reimposition of wartime export controls in the United States from October 1 might cause them to be diverted wholly to war-devastated countries.

In 1948, the Australian export market might be available for baling wire. Baling wire ordered from Australia in 1945 had not yet been shipped. Only small quantities were arriving from the United Kingdom, where manufacturers had not accepted orders from New Zealand for 12 months. New Zealand barbed wire manufacturers were able to obtain raw materials for only a very restricted quantity of wire. “It is likely that over the next two years supplies will be continually fairly short of our requirements, but farmers can be assured that every effort is being made both by the importers and the Government to obtain a share of the very small supplies of fencing, baling, barbirg and barbed wire offering in the world’s markets to-day,” continued Mr Cullen. Stressing the adverse effect of the shortage on the programme for increased production, an official of the Federated Farmers (Auckland Province) said his office had received an appeal for several hundreweight of fencing wire from a man who was breaking in 1000 acres of gum land at Whingarer. The project was impracticable without wire, and the many hours of work the farmer and his sons had put in would be wasted. Because of the shortage, farmers had been forced to use twine for baling. Electric fences had not solved the farmers’ problem, as the light wire used was in equally short supply. The Federated Farmers were conducting a survey at the present time to ascertain the total quantity of win needed by the industry. .