WHEAT IN AUSTRALIA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XC, Issue 13298, 29 May 1907, Page 7

WHEAT IN AUSTRALIA.

A WARNING XOTK.

Ib sesms to me, says a correspondent oi

the " Pastoralists' Review," that we in the Commonwealth, and more particularly in Victoria and New South Wales, are making a s.rious mistake. which before long must had to disaster, in promoting w'heatgrowing for. export. We are at a serious disadvantage in distance, wage rate, and the standard of living against all the world in

trying to sell our wheat in the markets, oi Europe. This disadvantage, so far,-has beep 'overcome by lowering tho charges- to SWh&aigrowers on' our State railways and spending vast sums of public money in providing storage sheds and shipping facilities, .aiiesef,* low freight charges and .shipping :facilities are given at the experso of the more profitable industries—wool-growing, lamipraising, dairying, and mining—which -nei titer require nor receive any such sul>~i- '• dies'-or assistance. If the concessions re-

ferred to were not given, not a bushel of exported from the Commonwealth', that is, if the same freight charges hadi'loibe paid on our railways as for wool, frozen'muxton, butter, or the products of the mines. In New Zealand, where the average return per acre for wheat is four times, as great as in Australia, tliey only grow' enough for their own use, and, instead, turn the land to the production oi wool, mutton, butter and cheese, as. our farmers should do, with profit to themselves and to the community, instead of biing a burdefi to the other more profitable industries, and a drag on the public revenue, for ever asking greater and still greater con-cessions,-the tendency of which is to load the whole of our 1 industries, and the ultimate result of which must be collapse. We are told that our superior inventive power will compensate for our other disadvantages, but our experience in the case of the harvester —the greatest advance in harvesting machinery that has been made for thirty. years—shows.that, such inVentions almaus before their use becomes general in Australia are copied and sent by tens of thousands to the moujiks of Siberia, die ryots of India, and the peons of Argentina, and there is no advantage to us from the invention, but rather a disadvantage, as our p t-itors get their harvesters in Russia, Argentina, India, the United States, and Canada 30 per cent. cheapeT than our farmers can get them here "where they were invented and we have, to put on a heavy import duty after inventing the machines to prevent our competitors from underselling .the inventor in Ballarat, the homer of the invention. 4 Australia is a rich country, and up to a certain point may be able to bear the cost of subsiding the wheat export, but if that export yere doubled it could not be borne, and long before that, owing to the-very small-margin of profit, the .c-lfect of the wheat exports must be to bring about serious distress, and probab.y a fall -in wages. 'lhe sheep-carrying capacity of Victoria and New South Wales could be quadrupled by cultivation, as could also the number of dairy cattle, giving profitable employment to a much larger population than Ave are likely to have in the next thirty yeais. it .does* seem to me infinitely foolisn for our -Government to burden our profitable indy:tries for the sake of promoting one ...

must lead to collapse in the near iutuie. Beyond- the requirements of tlia Commonwealth 7 every bushel of wheat grown is grown aud exported at a loss. If that were not so no subsidy or assistance would bi i£quired as the plea of the "infant industry' is'clearly nonsensical. Wherever wheat caii be grown the same expenditure and labour in laising fodder crops would give tlie community double or treble the profit. Ih.\ farmers' profit on wheatgrowing now is .subsidy, and nothing else. In Australia, not excluding any State, there is room i'or infini;e extension of the profitable industries-, and also for the extension of wheatgrowing for local consumption, but for export wheatgrowing can only be a drag and a burden on the .profitable industries. In New South Wale; —the state to which 1 belong—the railway freights on wool, ani live stock sent -down to be frozen and exported, are more than four times as high as for wheat, and the same system to a ■greater or less degree prevails in all the other States. Every wheatgro'wer in the (Commonwealth will admit, I think, that if his freight charges . were ..multiplied by .four, apart, from the interest the cove of shelter goods and shipping appliances, he would not export a bushel of -wheat. Ihe farmers are now urging that appliances for exporting in bulk should be erected, -without which, they say .that they cannot carry on. More than this—wheatgrowers are urged and encouraged to go in for dry furrowing or bare fallowing, which means thatonly 10 bushels per acre are to be raised in two years, or 5 bushels per acre per annum, which, of course, can be don.e, but not without increased subsidy in some form.