WHEAT GROWERS’ PLIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 919, 12 March 1930, Page 9

WHEAT GROWERS’ PLIGHT

CO-OPERATION ONLY SAVIOUR OF CROPS SUMMARY ADVICE GIVEN (Received 11.10 a.m.) WASHINGTON, Tuesday. Mr. Alexander Legge. an agriculturist expert, has issued a warning that unless wheat farmers reduce their acreage by 10 per cent, and prevent another wheat surplus, the Farm Board will be unable to help them to get a fair price next year. Mr. Legge, in a virtual ultimatum in a letter to Governor Shafer, of North Dakota, explained that the board will have 100,000,000 bushels of wheat on hand at the end of this year. , There is no hope of dumping much on the export market, nor is there a hope of relief of the congestion al. the terminal markets within 60 days. “The tendency seems to be for the congestion to grow worse instead of better,” he said, “which is due to rapid ; liquidation in Australia, Canada and , the Argentine.” Mr. Legge stated he believed this would continue at something below the price ‘level in the United States. I “No matter to what basis our price : level went.” "If the farmers are going ahead trying to produce an additional surplus on the basis that some way will be found to take care of it on a fair price level another year they are going to be mistaken,” he went on. , “If they will co-operate for stabilisation. a corporation will be justified in paying storage charges and carrying

this wheat for a time in the hope of ! a crop shortage somewhere in the world to give them an opportunity to i unload it. “If on the other hand the farmers' attitude is to ‘let George do it all,’ the natural procedure would seem to be to dispose of tills wheat the best way they could, and write off the loss. But this would adversely affect the 1 price of the 1930 crop. “There is no possible solution, in- ; less we get a co-operation of the wheat growers themselves. No other in- ! dustrv blindly produces without attention to potential market possibilities." i