WELLINGTON NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 1 June 1928, Page 4

WELLINGTON NEWS

WORLD’S WHEAT LANDS,

CSpecial to “ Guardian.”)

WELLINGTON, May 30

From time to time public attention is aroused by the perennial prediction that the human race will, in the near future, run short of food. The prediction is based on two incontestable facts —the possibilities of increasing population are unlimited, whereas the surface of the globe is limited. There are some who say that we are already near the limit of productive land, that in fact the possibilities of extending the food producing area are practically exhausted. Those who take tin's view usually agree in terms of wheat, observes Sir Henry Hew, who was former, eilv Assistant Secretary to the British Board of Agriculture, overlooking the fact that four-fifths of the world’s population depend on other kinds of food for their subsistence. The chief wheat-growing countries in the world are. in order of area, devoted to the crop—Russia, United States, Canada, Argentina, Spain. Italy, Australia. Of these six regularly export a substantial part ot their crop. As exporting countries they rank in different order, thus—Canada. United States, Argentina. Australia, India. Not one of these wheat exporting countries has yet utilised all the land suitable for the crop. The development of Canada, rapid and great as it lias been, lias so far extended to only a, comparatively small part of the vast area. Excluding the North-west Territories as outside the potentially productive area, the total land area of the Dominion is 1400 million acres, of which only 10 per cent is occupied for production and not more than 3 or 4 per cent is actually under crop. It is estimated that at least 410 million acres are available, and at a very moderate computation one-fourtl. of tliis area could be devoted to wheat each year. The present wheat production oT Canada would thereby ho quadrupled. Professor Russell Smith, of Columbia. University, declares that in the United States the present wheat belt “along the indefinite western boundary ” is extending steadily as the results of experiments in wheat culture. He thinks that the United States and Canada together are good for an increase of several hundred million bushels of wheat per year, peiliaps a. billion, possibly more. the same high authority on economic geogvapliy describes the wheat region of Siberia as “the geographic double ol North America, along a belt stretching in Canadian latitudes between a northern forest zone, as in Canada, where the limit is cold, and a southern arid zone, where the limit is drought. The Continent of Australia is about as large as the United States, and less than 10 per cent of its area is utilised. The two other wheat exporting countries—Argentina and India—have comparatively little unproductive land, although in South America generally there are large areas of waste capable of growing wheat. Tn Chili, for example, not more than about 8 per cent of its total area is at present utilised. Those who insist that the world’s

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wheat area cannot lie expended much do not deny that there are large tracts of land which are -now unproductive hut contend that physical and economic difficulties prevent their utilisation. There are large. tracts that are arid and lacking adequate rainlall can he brought in productivity by irrigation. If the question at issue were the threat of world famine it is ah.surd to suppose that mankind would accept starvation rather than make the necessary effort to utilise all the possible resources of nature. Much of the most fertile part of the earth’s surface lies in the tropics. The exuberance of nature is there amazing and the over-production of vegetation for economic use. Malaria, sleeping sickness, etc., are the grim sentinels that guard those fastnesses, hut these enemies are being steadily attacked, and no doubt in due course they will he overcome. Ample supplies of food are assured under an adequate stimulus to production.