STORAGE OF WHEAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1938, Page 9

STORAGE OF WHEAT

PRECAUTION IN EVENT OF WAR. MAINTAINING NORTH ISLAND SUPPLIES. Behind the report that the Auckland Harbour Board has been asked to store 20,000 tons of wheat “as a national emergency” is a short history of efforts by the Wheat Committee, at the instance of the Government, to ensure that the North Island should be safeguarded against a shortage of the main agricultural product in the event of the outbreak of a war. The North Island is dependent on the South Island for the bulk of its agricultural supplies and the danger to seaborne traffic is a possibility which has not been ignored by the Wheat Committee, which controls the purchase and supply of wheat throughout the Dominion. With international affairs so unsettled, precautions have been taken by the Wheat Committee. Enough wheat is now stored to provide bread and fowl food till the end of April and the threshing of the new season’s crops in the Dominion ensures a complete supply until the end of 1939. For some time, the Wheat Committee has been urging North Island merchants to carry at least two months’ supply of wheat. Some have done so. Poultry-keepers were also urged to carry as much wheat as their storage and financial facilities would allow. Both the merchants and the poultry-keepers were communicated with at the time of the recent crisis when the Prime Ministers of Great Britain and France met Herr Hitler. A survey of the international situation at the present time indicates that that precaution is still, to some extent, necessary. MORE STORES NEEDED. Most of the flour mills in the North Island are concentrated in the Auckland Province, the two mills in Wellington Province —in the city, and at Carterton—being inadequate in their output to supply the district, which draws its supplies, in the main, frojn southern mills. Only a small quantity of wheat for milling is stored in Wellington. Auckland has not the same facilities for storage of wheat as has Canterbury, which is the granary of New Zealand, producing nearly 85 per cent of the Dominion’s wheat. Under the Wheat Pool, 600,000 sacks of wheat, additional to that held in store by the millers, was stored in the South Island. The average annual consumption of wheat is approximately 8,500,000 bushels, of which 6,500,000 bushels are converted into flour. For the 1937-38 season, the Dominion production was below the internal requirements. It was 5,395,397 bushels. For the nine months of this year ended September 30, 3,076,244 bushels of wheat were imported, all from Australia, as against 648,800 bushels in the same period of 1937. So that the Dominion could be fed with wheat products in 1937, a total of 1,577,650 bushels was imported, compared with 407,141 bushels in 1936. THIS YEAR’S YIELD. Although the returns are not available for a complete estimate to be made, the interim survey suggests that a larger area of wheat will be harvested this year. An estimate is that the yield will exceed 6,000,000 bushels. The acreage would have been higher if the weather had not been so bad for a long period when farmers intended preparing and sowing their ground. In ihe recent crisis quantities of' wheat were brought from Australia to build up the accumulation of stocks in the Dominion, all available space cn boats being used. Negotiations have already beer, completed for the purchase of wheat in Australia this season and the first shipment of 3000 tons, all of which will be landed at Auckland, will be made early next month.

Only once in the last 15 years has the season’s yield of wheat' in New Zealand exceeded requirements. That was in 1933 when the surplus was more than 639,000 bushels. With the object of making New Zealand selfsufficient in wheat and wheaten products, a fixed price yearly is paid to growers and the importation of wheat or wheaten flour is prohibited, except under permit granted by the Minister for Industries and Commerce. Only 30 tons of flour have been imported to New Zealand so far this year. -