WHEAT SUPPLIES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3087, 18 May 1917, Page 4

WHEAT SUPPLIES

THE AUSTRALIAN PURCHASE.

The wheat supply question was considered by Cabinet yesterday. Sir-James Allen stated after the meeting that the news from Australia that Hr- slacDonald had completed the of a million and a half bushels of wheat was not authentic. In actual fact a cablegram was to be sent to ifr. McDonald that evening, and the bargain would probably l>o completed in a day or two. This wheat is .being purchased lo mako good a prospective shortage, which must at the present l-atq of consumption come upon us before next harvest. Some New Zealand millers have plenty of whoat for their requirements, but there are many millers who are already short of wheat. The price paid for the Australian wheat is higher than the Government expected to have to nay for it, but it is that the millers will be able to sell flour made from it at the schedule pricesi es<w)t in the wheat ports of the South Island. If the new wheat is landed at 'Auckland, for instance, it will be loaded with the cost of carnage from-Australia, but it will not have paid the usual freight from Lyttelton.