ADULTERATION OF INDIAN WHEAT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2292, 19 March 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

ADULTERATION OF INDIAN WHEAT.

Some time ago we published a reference to the supposed vicious system under which Indian wheat was purchased from tho growers. The theory was that the merchant always made a five per cent, deduction for impurities, even when the wheat he received was clean, and that the dealer prepared for such treatment by carefully adulterating his wheat to the extent of five per cent., even if he had originally a clean sample. This was supposed to be tho cause, of the dirty state in which East I ndia wheat always comes forward. The theory, however, is contradicted by an Indian firm, who have written to a large import house,in Christchurch as follows : —

"We have received from the colonies an extract header! "Why Indian wheat is adulterated." It is said that the Calcutta shippers insist when buying wheat upon linking a f> per cent, reduction for impurities. (t is not so. The Calcutta shipper makes no reduction at all, so long as the impurities do not exceed 5 per cent., which is a very different thing.

"Some standard of quality is necessary and must be fixed, and it lias been found by experience that the circumstances under which our Indian wheat is grown and threshed result in the presence in the bulk of substances other than wheat to the extent of about live per cent. The picture of the dealer receiving clean grain off the fields arid adulterating it with 5 per cent, of mud, in order to be even with the Calcutta shipper, is a purely imaginary one. There is practically no such thing as adulterating wheat up to. r » per cent., simply because the wheat comes off the threshing floors with that amount of admixture in it. Much wheat shipped from < 'nlcuttn is no doubt adulterated, and this can be accounted for by the fact that the dealer who adulterates in excels of the 5 per cent, originally in the wheat, does so in the hope that he may succeed in passing the stuff' as of the correct standard, and thus benefit to the extent of fi per cent. "So long as Indian cultivators grow wheat crops carelessly along with or side by side with other grain or seed crops, so long will it be difficult to obtain wheat in quantity of purity which would enable exporters to alter the standard of refraction. " It must not be supposed that no fairly clean wheat comes into the market, some does, but not in sufficient large quantities to affect the trade, and f> per cent, standard of refraction is therefore maintained.

" The solicitude with which the efforts of India to possess a share of the wheat trade of the world is watched by her competitors, and the disinterested nature of the advice they offer her in the conduct of her affairs, is of a piece with the kindly sympathy the Americans, the producers of si]ver, 4 have with India in the calamity afflicting her, in the form of the depreciation of the rupee."—Press.