GOVERNMENT HELP

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1785, 22 July 1926, Page 7

GOVERNMENT HELP

FOR GRAIN GROWERS. In urging the claims of wheat-grow-ing to adequate protection by the Government. an Oamaru resident, who has made a study of the question, stated that New Zealand could grow all the wheat required for local consumption. It would, he said, require 300,000 acres at an average of 28 bushels per acre, to produce the 8,400,000 bushels required. Taking the value of this at 6s 6d per bushel, on trucks, country stations, the gross value of the return to the Dominion would be £2,730,000. If the whole of out requirements had been imported this year in the form of flour, bran, pollard, and fowl-wheat, the total value would have been £3,215,000. This was what New Zealand would have been £400,000. If wheatbeer. grown this year, and no duty paid on the imports. If duty had been paid the increased cost to New Zeal*ad would have bemi £400.000. i wheatgrowing were abandoned, the most suitable altermtnc was the graxng of sl-tp. He compared the return from sheep-raising with that from wheatgrowing. Experienced farmers state 1 that the average wheat-growing land would carry 11 ewes per acre. He allowed 100 per cent of lambs at 30s per head, ancl 81b of wool at Is 3d per lb. He made an allowance for death-rate or loss from selling old ewes. The 300,000 acres would produce 450,000 lambs, valued at £675,000, and carry 450,000 ewes, the most of which would produce £225.000. The gross returns would thus be £900,000. On these figures the authority showed a surplus in favour °f wheat-growing of £1,830,000, and he urged that it was the duty of the Government, in these circumstances, to bring down legislation which would induce the farmers to produce the whole of the Dominion’s requirements. It was pointed out to the resident that sheep-raising did not impoverish the land like wheat-grow-ing. The reply was that there was a sufficient area in the wheat belt to adopt rotation, and thus avoid the exhaustion of the land, it was also pointed out that the net return to the individual farmer might not be as large from wheat-growing as from sheep-raising. The reply was that this was the greater reason for the adequate protection of the wheat-grower. What he desired to strongly emphasise was that if the. Dominion went out of wheatf-raising, as the result of the lack of adequate protection against- outside competition, the country would be impoverished to the extent of about £2.000,000 annually. The national standpoint demanded protection.