GERMANY'S POOR HARVEST.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 November 1916, Page 5

GERMANY'S POOR HARVEST.

ONLY SIX MONTHS' SUPPLIES. In tlio present circumstances of tJrS German people the harvest of li9lß Is of paramount importance. On the extent of its yield will largely depend the length of their resistance. Characteristic efforts have been made by Government officials and newspapers to represent tb.B situation us very favorable, but these assurances have nob dispelled publio anxiety. There is, in fact, ample evidence that the optimistic reports Bpread abroad are entirely misleading. In the official Agricultural Bulletin for Northwest Germany, issued in the third week of June, it was admitted that oat.s and spring wheat had been greatly damaged by caterpillars, and all cereals but especially rye, had suffered severely froin the lack of nitrates. The position a<J regards, labor is described as deplorable. Information from other sources point* to the prevalence of storms and heavy rain, with a low temperature, having caused mildew and other damage. Travellers from Germany state that the winter rye crop has been almost entirely; ruined by heavy rains. Even ■German" newspapers occasionally admit that tha, prospects are loss bright than the Government represent them to he. On June ti the Mnnehncr Neueste Kachrichten stateil that .'erioin damage had beea caused in Bavaria, by hailstorms, and that r.o part of the kingdom had escaped; and on June 13 the Vorwarts wrote that heavy storms had been caused by; thunderstorms, rain, hail and snow in Bavaria, the Baltic provinces, the Black Forest, the v'osges districts, and AlsaceLorraine, sufficient to warrant grave anxiety as to the prospects of the harvest throughout Germany and Austria. Reports from neutral countries are uniformly unfavorable. One reliablo authority asserts that "the German crop of rye will be bad, and, in a lesser degree! those, of wheat, oats, barley and potatoes. In fact, the harvest will in general be much below the average. The , causes are the lack of manure, the imperfect tiilngo by the Russian prisoner*, of war. and. in a lesser degree, the bad; w< ather." Other reports from well-in-formed neutral sources tell of the complete failure of the rye crop, which is. / nearly three times as large as the wheat crop 'in normal years. An influential neutral, who has exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the facts, states that he bus it on German olHci.il authority that this year's harvest will only suffice to feed the population for six niontha at the outside.