WHEAT SUPPLIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 19156, 12 April 1932, Page 8

WHEAT SUPPLIES

COMPLAINTS OF AUCKLAND POULTRYMEN. CHRISTCHURCH, April 9. Auckland is having another of its periodical grumbles over the wheat question. This time, according to a northern exchange, poultry farmers there are complaining about what they have to pay for their fowlwheat, which, on the current South Island f.o.b. quotation of 49i a bushel, is 2d a bushel more than it was at this time last year. Milling wheat, on the other hand, is over 1 - a bushel j cheaper. If they were expecting any , benefit from the recent reduction in j the sliding scale of duties, it is pointed I out on their behalf, they have been dis- j illusioned. and it is suggested that the ! duty on this class of wheat should be j suspended for North Island imports, j What has probably caused the j dearer price, it is felt by Christchurch merchants, is the change in the j marketing conditions. Last year the j operations of the Wheat Pool succeeded in stabilising it to a great extent, J preserving it at a level that was i equitable to both growers and con- | sumers, but under the new marketing ! scheme only milling wheat is con- j cerned. Fowlwheat consequently is governed j by a free market, and the result has | been that speculators have forced the j price up to what it is to-day. And ■ Auckland merchants, it is contended. ! are to blame as much as anyone else i for it. Any amount of wheat that is selling > on a basis of the present price in the l north was purchased forward at ! Christchurch for spread delivery, April-September and April-December, at from 3 10 to 4 3 a bushel. Poultrymen had the opportunity to stock up at those figures, and quite a number of them did. Actually, there is no valid reason for the high price, a reporter was told, as no shortage in this season’s yield is anticipated. The latest interim returns of the yield published by the Government Statistician, up to the end of February last, show that, with rather less than a third of the total yield threshed, there was a return of 2,393.423 bushels, at an average yield of 28.22 bushels to the acre. Experience in other years has shown that the average yield for the whole season is a little lower than that recorded at this stage, so that allowing for a drop of under a bushel an acre, the total yield from 276,000 acres will be somewhere about 7,500,000 bushels. Add to this the imports of flour, which have remained fairly constant, and which, in terms of wheat, are equal to about 750,000 bushels annually, and the carry-over of wheat and flour at the end of the milling year—February 29 which is equal to 680,000 bushels of wheat, and the total quantity available for the year will be approximately 8,930,000 bushels. According to the Government Statistician, the average annual requirement of the Dominion over the five years prior to last year was 8,789,000 bushels, so that on these figures there will be slight surplus. In all probability the surplus will be greater than is apparent here. Consumption last year showed a drop of some thousands of bushels, and it is thought quite likely that the same thing will occur this year. No explanation is forthcoming as to the reason of the decline last year, in view of the fact that bread is one of the cheapest of the staple foods, but it is considered in some . quarters that people did not throw so much of their stale bread away. Fowlwheat at the moment is not in particularly free supply, but a merchant stated that the apparent shortage was due largely to the fact that much wheat had been stacked. In South Canterbury, he said, fully 50 per cent, of the crops had gone into stack and would not be threshed until the spring, and large quantities in the Methven district had been treated the same way.