WHEAT AND FLOUR

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2357, 13 January 1915, Page 6

WHEAT AND FLOUR

THE IMPORTS FROM ABROAD. 'A SHORTAGE HERB. The wheat arriving from Canada to the order of -the Government is now being distributed throughout New Zealand among those millers who are most urgently in need of it. There is no doubt that a very grave situation would have arisen if no wheat had been imported. Some of the bigger mills have supplies to carry them on until after the harvest, but only sufficient for ordinary production. They would not have the wheat nor the milling capacity to supply other localities whore.there is no wheat. A good deal has been writton about hoarded wheat, but no evidence can be discovered to support the statements.: A correspondent to a Wellington paper, who, as a politician, for some years conducted a sort of anticorn law campaign against the flour duty, scolded the.. Government some days ago for failing to remit the duty on wheat and flour at this crisis. As a matter of fact the duty was suspended very; soon after the outbreak of war, when it was first discovered that there was likely to be a shortage of breadstuffa in the Dominion. "There is no doubt whatever that wheat and flour are scaroe," said the Prime Minister yesterday, discussing the subject with a Dominion reporter. "We are distributing now small shipments of Canadian wheat, which arrived by the Niagara and the Waitemata from Vancouver, and the Kaiapoi has left Australia with 100,000 bushels for New Zealand. I think that the 500,000 bushels of wheat purchased by the. Government, the bulk of whioh is yet to arrive, and some small orders by private individuals, will) along with the wheat and flour in New Zealand, be sufficient to carry us on until late' in February, when the first of the new wheat from our own harvest will be available. In saying this I am taking into account the faot that a certain amount of old wheat will bo necessary to mix with the new wheat in the flour mills."

, The Canadian wheat now being imported would be scorned by a grain merchant if it were shown to him as a New Zealand sample.. The grain is small and shrivelled, but very hard— the meanest-looking sample. As one farmer said, discussing a handful of it, ."They would offer us about 2s. 3d. for that, referring, of course, to the grain merchants and millers. . New Zealand wheat of the same appearance would be of very low value in an ordinary market, but the American grown wheat, by reason of its thin skin, and its hardness and dryness, is said to >,yield excellent results when milled into flour. It would, however, commend itself to no farmer as a seed wheat. Probably the imported corn, if sown, would take at least two years to. acclimatise, and in the process 'of acclimatisation our different season would-change the character of the grain, making it more like, the average of the New Zealand-grown wheat. •■.'■' ■':.[■'■•