WHEAT PRODUCTION.

Southland Times, Issue 1240, 22 April 1870, Page 3

WHEAT PRODUCTION.

The telegram from Adelaide on the sth instant informs us, on the authority of the Bepister, that the yield of this year's crop of wheat is six bushels to the acre, giving 33,500 tons for export. We suppose the estimate is pretty near the truth. This year is not an unfavorable year. Adelaide stands among the highest of the colonies as a producer of wheat. We may then conclude, that in Australia, as the plant is at present treated, six bushels per acre may be taken as a fair average gross return from all the wheat lands, in unexceptionable seasons. On the other hand, we are aware that many persons sow as much as three bushels — and that tb.9 great majority never think of sowing so little as one per acre. In the one case the gross result is twofold, and under the other supposition it would be sixfold. The net profit, being a fraction of this remaining after deducting the expenses of rent or interest of purchase money, of fencing, draining, labor, seed, harvesting, and transit to market. This margin of profit appears so small that we do not wonder at the hesitation amongst our people to engage in the enterprise of cultivating wheat land. Wheat is bread, and bread is the staff of life ; and with so many indications of better expectations before us, it is hard to believe that such agriculture is deserving of the name which is satisfied with getting two, or even six seeds for every one seed sown, of the staple of food for so large a portion of the human race. Let us analyse a little. Six bushels per acre ! What does it mean when you have it in khe field ? Allow sixty pounds weight for each bushel — 6 bushels=36olbs. =2,520,000 grains avoirdupois; and as 40 corn grains are about equal to 30 grains avoirdupois, 6 bushels will represent 3,360,000 corn grains, upon an acre —for which 3 bushels seed==l,6Bo,ooo are not unfrequently sown. But an acre is=4B4o square yards, or 43,560 square feet. It follows then that on every square foot of soil there are sown 38| seeds, or one seed for every 3f square inches, and that the result is six corns on every little square of 3f inches ; and as one ear of wheat cannot be taken as containing fewer than 50 corns, it requires more than eight of those squares to produce an ear. Instead of 50, however, there would be upwards of 100 if properly cultivated, and then the ratio would be 16 seeds upon less than half-a-foot of ground to produce one ear ! What kind of a crop of cabbage, of turnip, of anything you please, could a man expect, who left the plants nnthinned at 38| to the square to the foot ? But neither the cabbage nor th» turnip is naturally a larger plant than the triticum, and therefore the same dwindled and degenerated growth is the produce of both. The thickly- crowded seeds germinate, spring up, fight with each other on the soil like starving dogs around a bare bone, shoot up and shutting out light and air, like a grove of close firs putting up heads on bare poles, their puny stalks can scarcely carry their puny tops. Let a shower come, they fall and rot — let it not fall, and still they yield but one half-sized ear to eight seeds — six corns for one. There are, indeed, many enemieß which have to be guarded against by the wheat-grower ; but Liebig truly says, "There is no greater enemy to a wheat planet than another wheat plant, or to a turnip than another turnip," and this worst enemy the grower habitually multiplies around his plants by sowing a dozen in a space not sufficient for one. So he gets for one corn sown, six reaped — for eight corns sown, one poor ear. But let any one take a single corn, and sow it where it can have what space it likes, — say in a separate bed of prepared ground, and it will be difficult for the combination of many disadvantages to

bring its produce dovra to fifty times that proportion. A single ear to one seed would be fifty to one, but there ought to be several ears. We have ourselves seen eighty stems from one seed, and the size and weight of the ears, and of the grains, were very much larger than the usual broadcast produce. Mr Caird, who is excellent authority as a practical farmer, is quoted by Mr Mechi as having treated a seven-acre field in good heart thus : — - " I desired my laborers to dibble one kernel in a hole at intervals of 4^ inches ; every kernel came up, and tillered so strong, that you may commonly find from twenty to forty stems ; and, though it looked thin when it first came up, it is now the thickest crop in the field ; instead of a return of 9 for 1, I shall expect on these lands a return of at least 200 for I." He does not give the distance between the rows, but the quantity of seed was only one peck to the acre. " I have," says Mr Mechi, " before me now a well verified case, where a single grain produced fifty-seven stems, conl taining 4500 kernels." Again, " Some kind friend sent me forty grains of wheat. My man dibbled it at intervals of 8 inches among a crop of bearded Rivett wheat. I have had it accurately weighed to-day by a chemist, who gives the annexed table, | shewing a net increase of 287 for 1. " 40 corns weighed 328 grains. Total weight is 9420 grains. As 328 grains : 9420 grains : :40 : 11,487— 0r 287 for 1." It is probable that this was Hallett's ■ nursery wheat, which is sometimes called " Pedigree," Mr Hallett having selected from many well developed plants, with plenty.of light, air, and room, the best corns of the best ears, and propagated these for a further selection, until the species, ! degenerated by ages of crowding, began to improve into something like what it i naturally is, and was, when it was expected to produce " some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold." But some persons having bought the seed so improved, again flung it broadcast ; when, after a season's assertion of its recovered vigor, it was again starved back to the hungry level of the six-bushel to the acre. JL priori, no man could expect that the main support of life to such multitudes in all ages should yield so slender a return. "Where the winters are mild, and the autumn and spring so temperate, the "hundred fold" ought to be far surpassed. We have an account of Pliny's steward having sent him to Borne, from his African farm, 400 ears from one seed. We think that, with proper cultivation, and by the rigid selection of the heaviest seeds from the heaviest ears of the best tillered plants, the wheat plant would be, in time, as prolific as the maize, and j require nearly as much space for each plant, — the maize, we mean, as it is when properly treated ; for here that, too, is degenerating, from slovenly farming, shallow digging, want of manure, and, above all, from crowding and darkening. Surely this is a matter of serious interest. There were returned last March 164,206£ acres of land under wheat in this colony — more than one third of the whole cultivated land,— there can be little doubt that one-tenth of the quantity rightly worked would have produced a larger produce. If so, labor and time, and capital, and seed have been simply wasted. Even the seed for so large an area, at the broadcast rate, is a valuable item. ; But it is a difficult thing to make farmers try. People coming here from England with a little capital are warned to learn " colonial experience " before they set to wor k — and, learning it, they go on in the colonial way. Now, on leaving England, such a man's chief advantage ought to be, ! to have escaped the stereotyped prejudices of the agricultural traditions; and certainly he should not graft upon them the equally absurd ones which he finds here. We know what they are on this very subject in the old country, notwithstanding the proofs which abound. They would rather lose by the old system than gain by the new. A gentleman farmer once showed us a field of splendid ranklooking wheat, of a fine.dark green, about half-grown. He acknowledged that its very luxuriance would be its ruin, and that he could not expect sixpence in return. "It was too rich; the first shower would destroy it." Too rich ! An extraordinary — yea, an impossible fault. It was too crowded. Where one plant ought to have been there were fifty. But when we suggested the plan of thin sowing, we were laughed at, although, even if our plan produced loss, it could not have been worse than his. Colonial experience may not tend in the same direction, but independent thought and reading and cautious experiment will be found safer. Now, we do not at all mean to say that a badly drained, poorly worked, and nonenriched field will produce those returns, in whatever way you sow. The food must be in the field, and made available for the plant, else there can be no crop. But space forbids our entering on this part now. We may return to it. Suffice it to say that the settlers in this colony possess advantages and facilities for the highest farming and the greatest returns beyond any of their brethren in the old country. — S. M. Herald.