TOO MUCH WHEAT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 88, 14 April 1938, Page 7

TOO MUCH WHEAT

SERIOUS PROBLEM FOR PRODUCERS 1 Par Pr*n Awociation. ] WELLINGTON, April 13. The wheatfields of the world produce more grain that mankind consumed and the most serious problem confronting the industry to-day is to find a market for 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 bushels more than was actually required. This was the main subject of discussion by the Wheat Advisory Committee of the Empire Producers’ Conference at Sydney, according to Mr John H. Wesson, president of the Saskatcnewan Wheat Pool and Canadian Chamber of Commerce, who arrived at Wellington to-day by the Wanganella after attending the conference as head of the Canadian delegation.

World wheat requirements formerly stood at 750,000,000 bushels a year. They were now down below 500,000,000 bushels, said Mr Wesson. The world carry-overs at the end of July would be normal only on account of four short crops and disasters in the United States and Canada and a disaster in the Argentine. If normal crops were raised on the present world acreage in was logical to assume that there would be a larger surplus than that of 1930-35. This situation was due to certain European countries, notably France, Germany and Italy, following out the policy of economic nationalism striving to become more self-reliant in their food supply. Before 1930 those countries alone imported some 172,000,000 bushels a year more than they had taken since. The wheat producers’ lot in the future would not be very bright in the event of normal crops being produced. It was hard to say which would U? preferable—good crops at ruinously low prices or poor crops at high prices and the producer having little tc sell

The conference had adopted the report of the Wheat Advisory Committee and rad resolved to ask lor a continuance of the World Wheat Advisory Committee with headquarters at London. It had also recommended the wheatgrowing countries to get together to form an agreement along the lines of the London wheat agreement of 1933.

“As wheatgrowers, we believe we , should give the world every bushel i it wants but we believe it is futile to | dump more wheat on the market than | it will absorb,” said Mr. Wesson. “We j think an agreement should be i made on a quota basis that will ! fill the world demand without ; allowing the unwanted surplus to be i a price-depressing factor that may mean the regimentation of producerin some countries. But it is belter to get a reasonable price for what is required than a slaughter price by insisting on selling what is not required. “I understand New Zealand is not ; a world factor in that it does not pro- 1 duce enough wheat for its own re- i quiremerits and the price level can I easily be controlled. It is a different | problem for a country like Canada 1 raising a normal wheat crop of 400 | million bushels and consuming only 100 million itself.