The Price of Wheat.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2975, 13 August 1888, Page 2

The Price of Wheat.

■ A now number of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England contains one of the most able contributions to the great wheat question which has appeared for some time. It, is bv Mr iY. E. Bear, tho well-known agricultural correspondent of the' Standard. Mr Boar shows that we 4 have to look to India for the oxplaiia-1 turn of the fall in.priccs whioh recently taken place, He shows that* owing to the opening up of railways m ' India the growers of wheat, who bad hitherto been receiving but low prices have been able: to sell to them at an advance, this being approximate to tlie price which the grain fetched 'in Europe. Thus, although India ha 3 " sold to us at adecliningprice, that . salo has been effected in a large measure by the contributions who have received an advance; Again heshows that freights have fallen, and that in this way the grower has re- : ceived some assistance to meet him in ,: the decline of price. , The chief caused of the'position of the Indian whbat ' grower is, however, the fall iii the value of'the rupee in gold, so that '.'■■■ although we pay less money for the >' wheat we receive from 'lndia,-the' '•-" grower received very noarly the same • as ho had been accustomed to do.': With regard to,the American Mr Bear ' shows that during the four years )! which were completed on the 'Blst of ':• December last, the export of American grown wheat"was considerably".less ■■ than during the four years, In thatperiod the productionarnbatited■•■ '*■ to four hundred^.and.' fifty." one..■; million bushels, lion bushels, .roughly:speaking, exported. In the past four yeais, iljowjv' 7 ever, iii\ million bushels .were' .prfc /; Ouced, but bushel^

'jyj:' ; " Thus not onlyhas tlio i&>'£>, r ' can 'contribution diminialtecl in degree, bnt it we consider tlio iuoroase in tlio population m America iljs^ '. andiu Europe during that period, that p^; : .:diminntion has'beon far. greater than W:'\-M can gather from a mere coiisUeraPifttioXof these figures But the fall is |i|l?}|; iiot traceable alone to America; it ap--o*™ .to", have been general in all ligft countries—with tlio excoption of India w%'-;—and it is to'that country that wo Sj>?v: 'have to' look chiefly for the influeuco |?\;'.V whioh will affect our prices in the §V V ; future,