THE Wairarapa Age SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1907. AUSTRALIAN WHEAT HARVEST.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8342, 26 January 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1907. AUSTRALIAN WHEAT HARVEST.

Late reports indicate that the Australian wheat harvest will not be so large as was anticipated, either in Victoria or New South Wales. The South Australian Vield was still a matter of some doubtjWhen the last mails left Australia, but the Melbourne Argus estimates that in round numbers the Commonwealth wheat harvest may at present, and subject to some slight revision, be estimated at about sixty million bushels, against last year's crop of sixtyeight and a-half millions. Last season's exports of Australian wheat and flour were equivalent to some thirty-seven and a-half million bushels of wheat, but the coming season's exports are not expected to reach thirty million bushels. The fallingoff in the yield has led the Argus to urge that the Victorian Department of Agriculture should initiate a bold forward policy with the view of ascertaining whether, by the employment of better methods, a larger average yield cannot be secured. To say that the general average return is sadly disappointing seems putting the position very mildly, when it is added that for the past eight years, excluding the exceptional drought year of 1902-3, there have only been two seasotis when the average yield exceeded 9£ bushels per acre. The average wheat yield in New Zealand for the same period has been 32 bushels per acre. Wheat-growing, it is pointed out, is the great agricultural industry of Victoria, and is likely to remain so, and if the

average yield of about 9 bushels per acre could be raised to 14 bushels, which is the average -in the United States, the ensuing benefit to the Victorian farmer would fully justify the expenditure by the Department of Agriculture for a period of years of a large amount of money and labour. If this season's average yield per acre, for instance, were 14 bushels, the money value of the wheat harvest, at the present price, would be over a million and a-quarter sterling more than will be the actual case. Or, to put the argument in another way, the same quantity, of wheat as represents this season's harvest could be raised from little more than two-thirds the area of land that is occupied* by wheat this season, with a consequent large saving of the cost of working and cultivating. The Department has been working away with experimental plots for years, but the average yields continue low. This perhaps is partly the fault of the farmers, who may have paid no attention to the lessons to be learned from the plots. But they would hardly fail to be impressed by the results of a careful investigation by the Department into the methods of wheat-growing on a number of typical farms in various parts of the State.