WORLD'S WHEAT CROPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 247, 18 October 1926, Page 4

WORLD'S WHEAT CROPS.

SHORTAGE IN EUROPE. , ABUNDANCE IN AMERICA. According to the "Agricultural Market Report," London, Europe will require to import more wheat than last year, To meet this deficiency North America has a decidedly larger crop. The total United States crop may be estimated at 449,000,000cwt, which is 90,000,000cwt better than last year and 2,000,000 above the five-year average. For Canada, the latest official return gives the total as 170,000,000cwt. considerable deterioration being reported during the last month. The latest estimate is 12,000,000cwt below the average of the five years 1920-24, and 50,000,000 below last year's very good crop. Thus North America as a whole may be expected to yield 40,000.000cwt more than in 1925. Comparing 1926 with 1925, the total harvest of Europe is smaller, and that of North America larger. On balance, therefore, the production of the northern hemisphere as a whole would not appear to differ very materially from that of 1925. Whether, ultimately, the total supplies will prove abundant or the reverse depends upon whether the next harvests in the southern hemisphere' are largely over or under average. Of them, all that can be said at present is that prospects of the young crop in Australia are very satisfactory, and that in Argentina, while the weather has not been very favourable recently, it has now taken a turn for the better, and that the first official estimate puts the area under wheat at 19,000,000 acres, or about 200,000 acres less than that reaped last season.