WHEAT PRODUCTION

Temuka Leader, Issue 2404, 27 September 1892, Page 3

WHEAT PRODUCTION

The men who province wheat for the next generation will be the rich men (observe a Wyoming paper). Wheat is the wealth maker of the future. It has been too cheap to produce for 20 years. The other extreme is upon us. Consumption of wheat has overtaken its pi-oduction. There are no more CiGVwrnment acres to subdue fov. its production, and the increase in population o the world increases its consumption over 30,000,000 bushels per year. In the near future wheat will sell in the farmers' granaries at from £2 to £3 per bushel. Tt is gratifying to have this view sustained by such an authority as Charles A. Piifsbury, of Minneapolis, who is at the head of the largest flour mills in this country, if not in the world. His position as one of the largest cash buyers of wheat in America makes it necessary that ho should keep thoroughly informed as to all the conditions which are likely to affect the market price of wheat and flour. Probably no one in the United States has made a deeper study of all phases of the wheat question or is better informed as, to all the sources and statistics of its production, the relations of supply and demand, and all the conditions of the market than he. C. Wood Davis, in a recent elaborate article in the Arena, declared that the consumption of wheat throughout the world had already overtaken production, and that at so early a date as 1895 the United States will have ceased to export wheat, and, in fact, would have to import it to supply its own deficiency.

The St. i J anl Pioneer Press, stimulated by the statement of Mr Davis, caused ! Mr Pillsbury to be interviewed, and the 1 latter agreed with the Arena writer that the consumption had in fact overtaken the production, and that there had been no increase of acreage of wheat to correspond with its increased consumption in 10 years. This will be gratifying news to those who have been producing wheat for the last decade at ruinously low prices. They ought to have a benefit, and all signs of the times are wrong if they are not going to. It is believed on good authority that this year India will have nothing like the large surplus of wheat to dispose of that was raised last year. Final official accounts from the four principal wheatgrowing districts show a great decrease both in acreage and yield. The following figures relate to those four provinces only, reports from other districts not having been published:—ln the Punjaub the area is put at 6,223,600 acres, and the yield at 1,392,100 tons, as compared with 7,073,000 acres and 2,071,030 tons for 1891; in the North-West Provinces and Oudh, at 4,694,691 acres and 1,578,660 tons, against 5,219,000 acres and 1,745,000 tons; in the Central Provinces, at 3,750,845 acres and 737,497 tons, as compared with 4,294,000 acres and 910,000 tons ; and in Bombay, at 2,620,046 acres and 543,495 tons, against 2,864,388 acres and 553,000 tons. Altogether for the four provinces there are 17,289,182 acres and 4,251,752 tons, as compared with last year's 19,450,338, acres and 5,279,000 tons. There is thus a total deficiency of considerably over 2,000,000 acres and 1,027,248 tons, or about 4,740,000 quarters a quantity exceeding an average year's export. _____________«