A general survey of the wheat industry in New Zealand from 1918-1948

Abstract

Wheat forms a vast subject for study and presents a labyrinth of fields for investigation. In itself each of these gives full scope for exploration, analysis and reflection - from the elements of weather and climate through the growth and maturing of the plant whose harvest forms for so many peoples the staff of life, through the maze of research projects on the development of varieties, study of yields and disease factors, examination of flour quality, milling techniques and bakehouse organisation. But if the material is perplexing to penetrate, it is also absorbing; if it distracts, it also rewards and compensates. I have not pretended to cover the whole gamut of wheat. The work is an attempt to discover the social and economic consequences of having and supporting a wheat industry in New Zealand during the last thirty years, when I have sought to answer such questions as whether it has been worth while to grow wheat in New Zealand, what have been the results of our policy towards it and what have been the effects of the wheat industry on the community, I have done so not in any strict financial sense but as a simple effort to see what the subject has to yield, to find how the industry has affected and been affected by our national history.