The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1918. FACTS ABOUT FOOD GROWING.

Taihape Daily Times, 7 September 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1918. FACTS ABOUT FOOD GROWING.

(With which is Incorporated The Taihape Post and Walnrain-jn Newß).

That exceedingly useful publication, issuing from the Department under Mr. Malcolm Fraser, the Monthly Abstract of Statistics, is just to hand. It gives returns available to the end of July, but in some instances the figures are interim and are liable to some revision when actual returns are to hand. This is the case with the returns relating to the growth of wheat and other cereals; the figures, we are about to quote and comment upon cover the period to 30th June, 1918, but some of them are of the interim character, being estimates rather than i actual returns. They are, however, j quite sufficiently approximate for our J purpose. A strong appeal was made ! by the State for an increased area to be devoted to wheat-growing, owing to the fact that the land hitherto de voted to wheat did not produce sufficient to feed our own population. Taxpayers have been compelled by the Government to buy wheat abroad so that flour mills may go on earning big profits from those self-same taxpayers. With all eloquent persuasiveness of Ministers individually and collectively to put more land under the plough, these tell-tale figures just received from Mr. Malcolm Fraser show that 22,967 acres less have been ploughed for growing cereals, for producing food for our people, than were ploughed for the same purpose last year. The wheat area last season was greater by 59,134 acres, and the yield exceeded that of the previous year by 1,710,022 bushels, but there is a serious set-off in the enormous decrease in the production of oats and barley. The decrease of area under oats was 24.125 acres, and under barley 10.357 acres. The shortage in yield of oats amounted to 586.047 bushels, and that of barley to 165,989 bushels. For chaffing, the oats an 3 barley were proportionately short of the previous yecr's production, but wheat showed an increase in cultivation of 2,076 acres, yielding an additional 1,637 tons of whea.ten hay, over what was cut in 1916-17. Military Appeal Boards have exempted farmers and farm hands employed in wheat-grow-ing and cereal culture, and yet there has been 22,967 acres less land ploughed than in the immediately preceding year. Slightly more has been devoted to wheat, but that has been taken from growing oats. In spite of all the Government has done to induce agriculturalists to grow more food, suasion is a miserable failure, and if New Zealand is to grow enough food to support its own population some much more drastic steps will need to be taken. So long as Government exhibits such paternal care for the flour-milling industry, so long will there be a shortage of food. In the year 1915-16 wheat covered 329,207 acres, and yielded 7.108,360 bushels, equalling 18! bushels per acre. In 1916-17 the area dropped to 217,743 acres, yielding 5,051,227 bushels, equalling 23.19 "bushels per acre. Last year the yield was slightly better, 276,877 acres yielding 6,761,249 bushels; but it appears that it was the better yield the previous year that induced the increase last season rather than all the collective suasion of Government and exemptings of agriculturalists from military service by Military Service Boards . This growing of wheat is a supremely vital question,

but it should be as obyidds to agriculturalists as it is to economists that wheat is of greater importance to the peoples of the. world than wool, and that therefore, no product will ulti-

mately be more profitable to-grow than wheat. The abnormally high prices of wool ruling is the cause for many millions of acres of land being prepared for wool-growing in other parts of the world that were hitherto idle, producing next to nothing, and while only third class land can be profitably utilised for wool, that does not apply to wheat. While under.abnormal conditions we have the surprising experience of seeing land unsuited for agriculture sold at prices farmers of only a few years ago would have regarded as impossible. What it is desirable we should all understand is that cost of production from land of all life necessaries must ultimately govern the prices at which they are sold. Tne man that imagines one farm is going to produce wool at fourteen pence a pound, while an infinitely better farm near by is to grow wheat at four shillings a bushel, is demented. When the war is over there will be a levelling up and a levelling down; when abnormal demand for one article ceases, and the hitherto unprecedented restrictions on the freightage of another are removed which suppress the natural and normal demand, masters will commence to right themselves. Profits have had more to do with the plough in this country than all the regulations made and all the persuasivenes of the State; with it all 22,967 less were ploughed last year than in the preceding year.