ROMANCE OF THE WORLD'S WHEATFIELDS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 325, 4 January 1911, Page 2

ROMANCE OF THE WORLD'S WHEATFIELDS.

THE CHANGES IN POPULATION

AND ITS FOOD SUPPLY. The world's harvest (says "Public Opinion") is a ceaseless yearly wonder, and agriculture, though it. is getting buried beneath a manure of Latin and other words, is ever adding to its marvels. One of til-* most romantic stories of the world's wheat holds and their ever changing demand and supply -as told by Major P. G. Craigic, President of the Agricultural Section of the British Association. It was especially fitting that such a paper should be read amid the great wheat fields of Winnipeg. The "Times" gives n long report. The farmers' present problem is— Hcv,v to supply the ever-increasinc population of the world with its wheat food. "'ln the thirteen Stntct of Western and Central Europe there were a-'ded there, in the last seven years of the nineteenth century, something like 100,000,000 new consumers to the 167,000,000 persons previously resident on the 1,700,000 square miles of territory occupied by this group of nations," said Major Craigie.

DECREASING GRAIN AREAS. On the other hand, decreasing areas of the "chief grain foods were apparent in Great Britain or Scandinavian or North-Western Europe. On the average of the first quinquennium of the present century the home production of wheat represented o"ty about 20 per cent, of ths consumption in the United Kingdom, 20 per cent in Holland, 23 per cent, (apparently) in Belgium, 64 per cent, in Germany, and perhaps 80 per cent, in Italy ; and the imported grain to fill the deficits was considerably over

400,000,000 bushels. Nearly half of this came from Eastern Europe, and

particularly from Russia. Such a mass of produce would require 20,000,000 acres elsewhere, even if the exporters could raise it., as most had certainly not done, at 20 bushels per acre, and nearly double that area if the yield was only that of some of our largest expo- ters to-day.

"The actual reductions of area in Western Europe were not in the aggregate extensive, although Belgium

i had seen her grain area shrink from 30 to 25 per cent, of her total sur- • face. France from 28 to 23.3 per ! cent., and the United Kingdom from 'l2 to 10 per cent. Ko\vh:rc wad so ,' large a :'iiarc of the total surface imI dcr grain as in fioamania, where the : total grain acreage developed between is'i'J and 1396 by nearly 23 per | cent., anl the surface im'a' wheat : by 72 per cent. The yield there, aci cording to some ofhcL.l reverts, was I something over 13 bushels per acre in the live years before IS9O, and in ; those ending 1900 it ra' over 19 I lirshciK—in the latest year nearly ■ touching 2:5 bushels ; the barley yields for the same Stale rose from ;in average in the former quinqucn- ; ninm of VI bushels to oyer 19 bushels j in the latter. ! ■'•'ln hungary, another European I grain exporter, the wheat acreage ! had beer: materially developed, rising i from over 7,000,000 acres to 9,500,000 ''. in the twenty years to 1906, and but : sli::htly receding; since, while the i yields were also materially greater. France, with a drop in wheat acreage of l,i w )0,000 out of 17,00!?,,000 acres, • had between 18S-1 and 1908 raised the average of her prcdicticn on a live years' mean from 17.8 bushels, and thus turned out somewhat more produce from a lcsscn?d surfa'w ; NEW MOUTHS AND OLD ACRES.

"Cermany, on a constant but much .-nailer wheat area of 4,700,000 acres with a quiniuennial average yield of 20.;; bushels, wouh'l seem to have raited this to 27,9 in 1599-190:$, touching a still higher level in more rcctnt seasons, when 30 bushels were apparently approached, although some changes in her statistical methods of inquiry might slightly reduce this comparison.

"Some effort to feed new mouths from old acres had thus indeed been made, Nevertheless, one might broadly say that Western Europe looked mainly for the growing needs of her consumers to the still export-' ing States of Eastern Europe, to the Xr.v World regions of North and South America, and in a minor cle-).-:ee to Australasia.

TUB CHEMIST, THE POTANIST, AND WHEAT, "Science had much to teach ue iit making more use of the areas acknowledged to be under more or less rudimentary cultivation," addsd Major Oraigie, dealing with the available sources of new supplies. "If

i Sir William Orookes was right in | adopting t.h« American statistician's ' average of 12.7 bushels pur acre as

ihe mean of th 3 recognisable wheat fields of the world, the prospect of ; the extra seven bushels he sought as ; immediately desirable should ma':c ! i!s ear, re to leant the very latest, triumphs nf the laboratory in wiun't:•.'.,' for the i-'-'al a freer measure of ihe irti'ouui oi the p.U\. lUit hopefully as v/c mi;;ht watt on u.3 chemist's l:elp, lie, for bis own part, in.'l;,:r.i more camMcnfly to the botanist "The prolutar of ae'.v ;,ad prolific and vi'i diseaea rcsbdme; s -i:-i>i frostdefy in.-; breed:, of wheat plants v.-as today more than ever lar-oura-ed ■ by what ha! been done in many lands of !a< e in this direct :o:t, to si.iu ;he crop to its environment. N'oth'iur cie.ibi iv. a -rc.iter boon io Uie wheat fanners, handicapped by a short, a rat irregular supply of summer warmth, a.nd the. occasional hut often | untimely invadou of the frost bend, i tliau Ike piptiucticu of varieties ot

wheat at once prolific ai'-d early ripening, and sift ted to the relatively scanty moisture of semi-arid regions. i-KOM ALL QUARTERS OF THE WOULD.

'Th- farming of the future must ultimately he \ ir< of more careful Pipage, of more scientific rotations, .-ml of consideration for the changes in the grouping of population and in the world-wide conditions of man and his varying wants. V. hat was going on all over the world had to he. learned and studied, and wheat pioneers of the North-West must not forget the possibility of yet new competitors arising in the single task of wheat-growing, whether in the still developing sections of th? Russian Empire, the still open levels of Argentina, the little known regions of Manchuria, the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, the more completely irrigated plains of India, the tablelands of Central Africa, or perhaps under new conditions and more, developed control of the reserves of water supply on the southern shores of the Mediterranean or even in tin long tilled valley of the Nile.

ARGENTINA'S GREAT FUTURE. "In the forecasts offered ten years ago, Argentina M a wheat-grower was given a dozen years from 1303 to reach a possible acreage of 12,000,000 acres. She had reached that figure and passed it in less than a decade, and later current official estimates seemed to concede to that region a close approximation to 15,000,000 acres to-day. As the actual pace here had bettered so considerably than prophesied, one might legitimately question the further limitations v.-Inch allowed to Argentina no prospect of ever reaching a wheat area of 30,000,000 acres at any time. No one could note the strides which she has taken in rapidly augmenting her wheat areas and exports, and that concurrently with the commanding place she was assuming as a meat rearer and exporter to the older pcovles of Europe, without some recognition that a great future was possible."

Australia has now 0,000.000 acres under wheat, and from 1903 to 1907 the quantity of wheat exported has averaged 36,urn,000 bushels. Canada reckons its present wheat area at 7,750,000 acres.