1 Jury, 1902.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL, 13 
Mr. Tuynne: There is a gentleman on the Downs who has grown 4,000 
bags of wheat this year, and the cost of the bags alone for that crop, without 
taking into consideration the question of labour, will be about £100. If you 
put it that the wheat crop for Queensland is 1,600,000 bushels, that will give 
an actual cost to the farmers this year of £10,000 for bags alone, and I want 
the wheat-growers of Queensland to understand that this money can be 
saved; £10,000 saved to the farmers means interest on a sum of from 
£200,000 to £250,000, and that is more than would be wanted for the 
erection of all the elevators required in Queensland. Some years ago I 
ascertained from the Railway Commissioner the cost of bagging the maize 
crop at Laidley; £750 was considered a low estimate for the cost of 
bagging one crop for one season. When I got an estimate of the cost 
of an elevator to hold 80,000 bushels I found that it could be erected 
for from £750 to £800. These are the problems which have induced me ever 
since I saw an elevator working to keep this matter before the farmers of 
Queensland. The farmers’ profits are not too big at any time. Farmers have 
their troubles, and even if we have an extra good season there is generally not 
lacking some drawback to pull down the average. It is not merely the cost of 
the bags that makes this question of elevators one of such increasing importance. 
When you come to count the number of times that a bag of wheat, or a bag of 
maize, or a bag of barley, is handled from the time it leaves the thresher until 
it gets to the consumer, I do not think our total will be much less than ten. 
You have to take it from the thresher, put it in the barn, carry it to the railway 
station; thenit has to be loaded, unloaded at its destination, andsoon. I think, 
when mentioning that the bag of wheat is handled ten times, a low estimate has 
been quoted. If it is exported as we exported maize some time ago, I do not 
believe the bag is handled less than sixteen times. The farmer bears every 
enny of the expense of every one of those handlings, and, calculating the cost 
of those handlings at $d. a bag for every time one takes place, there is another 
5d. per bag added to the cost of the wheat through our present system. 
Practically the same is lost with our maize crop. In fact, taking into con- 
sideration the cost of both bags and handling, I think I am not exaggerating 
when I say that there are £20,000 going out of your pockets every year for 
these items. Twenty thousand pounds would be sufficient to put up all the 
elevators necessary to take all the Darling Downs wheat crop, not including one 
large elevator to cost about £5,000 and to hold 1,000,000 bushels. With the 
elevator system you get your wheat stored, cleaned, graded, and certified to as 
to quality. I have seen farmers in Toowoomba carrying little sample bags of 
their wheat round the town trying to get prices from one mill after another. 
Their difficulty was that they did not know the real value of their wheat. With 
the élevator system and proper inspection, which is necessary in all elevator 
systems, both the millers and farmers have a competent person to decide the 
value and grade of each comparative class of wheat. In that alone there would 
be a saving of time to each individual farmer, and the time hitherto spent in 
endeavouring to sell wheat could be utilised on the farm to more profitable 
account. It is for these reasons that I have always been most anxious to see 
the farmers of Queensland introduce this elevator system. In other places the 
introduction of the system has effected such a saving—a saving of 10d. a bag 
according to our cost—as to make a fair profit to those who grow the wheat and 
a fair profit to those who buy it. And when you come to compete with countries 
that have these facilities, you will find yourselves so handicapped without them 
as to practically leave you at the mercy of your rivals. What is an elevator ? 
A little elevator of 30,000 bushels is only a two-storied shed, built fairly strong, 
and Queensland does not lack good hardwood. It consists of an upper floor 
with 60 bins, containing an average of 500 bushels for each bin. There is a 
row of 6 bins across and 10 rows—z.¢., 60 bins. A farmer, if he has 500 bushels, 
takes 1 bin, or, if he has 3,000, he can take arow. Instead of having the labour 
of humping each bag and packing it in his store, all he does is to carry his crop 
in bags, boxes, or whatever he likes to the elevator, dump it into a trough, and 
