The Wheat Duties.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20234, 12 May 1931, Page 8

The Wheat Duties.

The outstanding fact in the Prime Minister's statement on the wheat and flour duties is that the price of wheat will be reduced, as from February of next year, to 4s 2d a bushel. Instead of a base price of 5s 6d a bushel, with a protective duty of Is 3d, the farmer will get 4s 2d, and have his protection lowered by sixpence. This is at least sevenpencc a bushel less than tbe great majority of farmers have been expecting, and very much less than it is necea-

sary they should get if they are to continue to grow as much wheat as the Dominion requires. The change is of course subject to the sanction of Parliament, and there is some hope stillin spite of what happened at the recent conference —that Parliament will refuse to agree to proposals which will put perhaps a third of the available Wheat land out of wheat production. Farmers Avho can be sure of from thirty to forty bushels will no doubt find it profitable still to grow wheat at 4s 2d (4s Sd less sixpence). But the man who can expect only twenty bushels to the acre will not even try to compete against Australia, so that the only hope for from a quarter to a third of our growers will be on Australian drought. It is a calamity—though not one that was entirely unforeseen —thfit the Government lifts been able to think of no better method of reducing the price of bread than by robbing the farmer, and of no better method of restoring the national finances than by interfering with the only branch of farming that has been reasonably successful and secure.