DEPLORABLE DECREASE IN WHEAT PRODUCTION.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15976, 19 November 1919, Page 10

DEPLORABLE DECREASE IN WHEAT PRODUCTION.

The State's wheat acreage has this year dwindled to 2,996,000 acres, as compared with the maximum of 5,122,000 acres four years ago. These figures make a staggering contrast, and one that no producing country can look upon with equanimity. A worse feature is that there is no compensating increase of production in any other direction. An even more disconcerting comparison is the decrease in the number of wheat growers. In 1915 there were 22,453, this year there are 16,277. The question is why have over six thousand of our farmers gone out of wheat growing in the past four years? The obvious answer is bemuse they could not afford to go on producing at a loss. Adverse seasons and inadequate prices have driven them off the land or into other lines of production. 'The present disastrous season is going to make it impossible for many others, who have this year ploughed and sown in vain to go further, oven though the Government has come forward with the helping hand and more liberal advances. It is fairly safe to assume, however, ithat, with a favourable planting season next year, the slump in acreage will be arrested. 'The market outlook offers inducements to that end. Nevertheless, the replacement of those six thousand lest wheat growers must, in any case, be a matter of years, and it occupies a foremost place in the problems of increasing production that has to be faced by the country and the Government.