WHEAT DUTIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 345, 16 August 1930, Page 5

WHEAT DUTIES

The “Manawatu Evening Standard** of Friday, July 18, in a long article on wheat production, warned its readers that “to allow the great-grower to go out of business rather than Keep him in at the present cost to the consumer’’ might be falling out of the frying-pan into the fire. There is the fact, to begin with, that Australia is not always blessed with a bounteous harvest, and tho * ‘Standard” asks what the position of the North Island poultrymen and pig-raisere would be if the Australian crop failed. But even if New Zealand could get as much wheat from Australia as it wanted at a price it could pay, “that would mean something over two millions sterling a year going out of New Zealand,” and the “Standard” wonders what products from New Zealand would be given in exchange. We are practicall. shut out of their market by their tariff barrier, especially our potatoes and our butter, and “every importer knows to his sorrow” that when the balance of imports is badly against us our imports cost more. It therefore concludes that ‘‘New Zealanders would be well advised to adopt as a national policy the principle that the Dominion should be self-contained so far as practicable in the matts? cf its chief food supplies, of which wheat is the most important of all.” This is so sound and wise that it is not necessary to carry the argument any further; but if it were necessary to add anything, it would be sufficient to remind the North Island that the price of bread is higher in Canada and America, which have dollar wheat, than it is in New Zealand, where wheat costs a dollar and a half, — Christchurch “Press,” 22-7-30. by Arrangement.)