DOES IT PAY TO RAISE WHEAT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1913, 12 February 1885, Page 2

DOES IT PAY TO RAISE WHEAT.

[''■ Prairie Earner."] In many parts'of the States the farmer is getting less than a cent a pound. for it. The railroad companies, ship owners aiid merchants take. the. rest.'; Wheat farmers are therefore having, a hard time, "and many of ' the great farms will doubtless soon pass into the hands of small farmers. This will be all the better for the prosperity of the State. Mature ia teaching the same lessqns hew that she is giving in Jtinneaota and Dakota. The fields that gave 30 bushels per acre a few years ago, are now thought to be doing well with half that yield, and the day now is not far distant when the patient Boil will rise in rebellion and rofuse to do more without hotter treatment. Now, in early December, one can seg great numbers of gang ploughs, drawn by six or eight horses, preparing the fields for the seeding. This kind of plougliing does little more than scratch the surface of tho soil, The winter rains aro late and the' wheat will not sprout until they begin, Through these valleys blow dry North winds, and if these como on when the grain is in the dough, the crop is always injured, In fact the lot of the wheat raiser in California is far from being a happy one. The dry weather, the dry North winds, the diminishing fertility of the soil, and the exceptionally low price of wheat, make his profits low and uncertain. These lands are kept in cereals because they will not grow anything else with certainty, without irrigation, If the prqbjen} or irrigatiqil 99414 he solved, then wheat fields would be devoted to a varied agriculture much tq the benefit qf their owners and the State,