Autralia’S Great Rice Mystery

What Becomes of £30-£40 Per Ton of Rice Sold to the Islands?

IT costs over £lOO Australian to deliver a ton of Australian rice at any -■ point in the Islands. The Australian grower is now (November) I getting £3O per ton. Who gets the balance? That is the unsolved mystery of South Seas commerce, at the moment.

AST month, in an unguarded 4 moment, PIM said that the hole sale price of rice was £25 for )me consumption and £34 for ex )rt. This was patently wrong. This as the grower’s price. The whole le price is £75 per ton.

The violent protests from the whole lers stirred PlM’s interest. If the ower gets only £3O per ton, and the holesaler pays £75 per ton for rice r the Islands, what becomes of the fference between £3O and £75 per n —that is, £45 per ton?

The further PIM followed the trail, 5 more it found of evasion, a snarl l mind-your-own-business attitude, d plain babbling. The more im rtant the executive interrogated, the >re baffling the smoke-screen. The K>le attitude of these people sug >ted a “racket.”

Finally, after many inquiries, PIM ve it up. But the conviction re lins with us that, in the sale of istralian rice to the Islands, there deliberate and ruthless profiteering, show that that belief is wrong, it 1 be necessary for the Australian crests concerned to produce to Vl —and to the Canberra Depart nts to which this article will be >mitted —some evidence that the stralian gents who control the rketing of rice are not profiteering

on Islanders' needs in a fashion peculiarly damnable. rpHE padi rice apparently goes from A the growers to some mysterious milling organisation. The millers pay the growers £3O per ton at present for the unhusked grain. The millers claim that when they husk the rice, they lose 34 per cent, of it, by weight —or one third. Some folk who know something of rice-growing declare that this claim is ridiculous—that the loss is not more than 25 per cent.

They may be right—but let it go as 34 per cent.

Milling of rice is a very simple operation. All over rice-growing countries, like Fiji, one finds home made contraptions which de-husk the rice, operated by Indians with man or horse-power.

There is a difference between growers’ price and wholesalers’ price of £45 per ton. Shrinkage, 34 per cent., may account for £l5. That means that the miller, for milling and bagging and transporting the grain to the wholesaler, gets at least as much as the grower—a good deal more, if the shrinkage is only 25 per cent, or less.

Information is that the milling pro cess includes the following: Grain is first husked, then some is

polished and graded while the rest (mostly for the Pacific Islands) is left unpolished and is “dehydrated.”

Pollard (or bran) from the polishing is valuable animal feed and has a ready market. Only wastage is the hulls and even they have some agri cultural value as a source of organic matter when returned to the soil.

Small and broken grains are turned

into rice starch, and flour, or into porridge meal and stock food or into a material used in brewing. A by product is gluten, which is used to enrich foodstuffs naturally deficient in protein. In short—mighty little of the unhulled rice grain is wasted.

One snarling gentleman who told PIM not to “blot its copybook” over rice declared that, if the millers made

profits, the profits went to the pn ducers because the producers own the mills. That is not in accord wi our information. We are told th the milling interests are very hurt ai very, very angry because the Murrui bidgee rice-growers have lately i stalled their own mills.

PIM editor informed the gent: man that rice-buyers throughout t South Pacific were cursing Austraj daily for the huge prices bei: charged. The gent replied that thi ought to thank Australia, becau Australia actually is selling her rii to the Islands at at least £lO und world parity.

Which may be true. But it st does not convince PIM that certa Australian middlemen are not wallo ing in a first-class racket.

The gent said also that “if a: racket is being worked, it is by t wholesalers, who lift the price fra £75 per ton in Australia, to ov £lOO per ton in New Guinea.” other words, profit plus freight, pll charges, lifts the price about 33 p cent. But the millers’ profit, pll shrinkage, plus bagging, plus trail port, lifts the price at that stage I well over 100 per cent.

Rice Prospects In P Ng

Mr. W. Poggendorff, rice expert the NSW Agricultural Departme: who visited Papua-New Guim

arlier this year, is favourably im iressed with the prospects of rice •reduction in the Territory. In his eport to the Federal Government he aid that the Territory was un oubtedly capable of producing its wn requirements of 15,000 tons per nnum and it could become a major sporting country if the resources of le Ramu-Sepik river system and 'apua’s western district were de eloped for flooded rice culture. [ Rice produced at present in the erritory is grown under upland jnditions—but flooded rice, he says, lould be given the highest priority id become the major method of ■owing.

If they want quick results, Mr. oggendorff said, large-scale mech lisation and eventual sowing and eed control from the air was the ily possible means.