WHEAT GROWING IN AMERICA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1330, 21 April 1885, Page 3

WHEAT GROWING IN AMERICA.

Mr B. G. Platt, writing to Bradstreet’s on “ Wheat Growing in Dakota,” says that the actual cost of wheat to him was 56 cents a bushel, but he admits that interest and wear and tear on machinery, and interest on the cost of the land should be charged, and these items are not included. Wheat, when he wrote was selling at 45 cents per bushel in Dakato. Partly owing to the credit system, he says, many farmers have had to sell out and leave their farms, to get away from “ the mountain of interest towering up before them,” and “old wheat fields are going to have a rest.” Another correspondent of the journal ]ust named, writing from Winnipeg, says that wheat costs not less than 50 cents a bushel to raise in Manitoba, while it has been selling at 46 cents. He believes wheat growing will not pay in the Canadian North-Wets The seasons,” he adds, “ are apparently too short for grain growing. The wheat crop must always be a painfully uncertain one, even when it is not a failure. Drought and cold continually threaten its earlier stages; frost menacing its latter. The mercury has a most alarming habit of hanging around the ‘thirties’ in the latter part of summer.” This year the crop has been not only a failure but a disaster. The writer describes the harvest as having been a very wet one, spoiling a great deal of the wheat, which has yielded not more than ]2 to 15 bushels per acre, he thinks. The Department of Agriculture estimated that there would be at least 6,000,030 bushels for export, but up to November 17th only about 500,000 bushels had been shipped.