DOMINION’S CEREALS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 35

DOMINION’S CEREALS

GOOD AVERAGE SEASON DEPARTMENT’S ANNUAL REPORT THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter PARLIAMENT BLDGS., Thurs. A spod average season for the Dominion’s cereal crops, with 255,000 acres estimated to have been sown in wheat, is revealed in the annual report of the Department of Agriculture. The season’s cereal harvest has proved to be quite a good one so far as actual threshings to date have disclosed. The actual figures are not yet available. but it is estimated that 255,000 acres of wheat were sown as against an actual sowing of 262,799 acres last season. Of this latter amount 260,987 acres were actually harvested for threshing and yielded a total of 9,541,444 bushels, or 36.56 bushels an acre. The estimated Dominion average yield an acre for 1928-29 is 33.06 bushels an acre, or approximately 8,400,000 bushels. The total yield of actual threshings so far show that the yield an acre is 35.28 bushels, which is approximately 2.22 bushels above the estimated yield. At 35.28 bushels an acre, 7,006,628 bushels have been secured. Up to the present there is no reason to suppose that the crop still remaining in stack will yield much less than that which has already been dealt with, and it may be confidently expected that the total estimated yield of wheat will be appreciably exceeded. So far as the oat crop is concerned it was estimated that for 1928-29 303.000 acres were sown as compared with 289,660 acres actually harvested in 1927-28. Threshings so far average 40.38 bushels an acre. This is approximately three bushels an acre less than last season’s actual yield, but is slightly above the Dominion’s average for the five years ending 1926-27. In respect to barley the percentage threshed for the five seasons endins: with 1927-28 was 98.03 of the total area under that crop. The estimated area sown in 1928-29 was 22.000 acres and, assuming that a similar proportion is threshed this year, the total yield of the grain, based on the average estimated yield, should be approximately 750,000 bushels, as against an actual yield of 861,985 bushels for the season 1927-28. The area in potatoes in 1928-29 was estimated at 21,100 acres as against an actual area of 21,693 acres in 1927-28. Basing the yield on the average yield an acre for the last five years, the total yield from the estimated area sown for 1928-29 should approximate to 112,674 tons, as against 121,402 tons last season. It should be noted, however, that in the above figures only holdings of one acre and over outside borough boundaries are dealt with. It is undoubtedly safe to say that a fair amount of potatoes are grown on smaller holdings and on holdings* situated within boroughs.