AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9862, 11 March 1896, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.

TO THK EDITOR OT THS PK.ESS. Sir, —Allow mc to thank you for the excellent and accurate information on our wheat crop and its prospects, which has appeared in the Press from time to time during the past few years. We farmers realise that it was owing to j*our advising us last autumn that prices would probably be higher in the beginning of 1896 than they were in the beginn/Mg of 1895 that we put an increased area under wheat, with the result that we have such a large crop of wheat to dispose of. I was interested to read your very logical comments on the Registrar-General's statistics, in which you pointed out that if, after excluding imports and stocks in hand, last year's crop of 3,833,112 bushels left about 150,000 bushels m excess of our consumptive requirements, therefore this year's crop and stock in hand of 6,519,704 bushels must leave a very much larger surplus than 1,500,000 busheis. The Eegistrar-General's figures ' appear about as fallacious as those ot the Lyttelton Times, when it told us that our last year's crop was 1,700,000 bushels short of our requirements. Their ignorance in, these matters last year is about on a.par jrifch the ignorance they showed on the '28th, of February in the present year, when, publishing the agricultural statistics, they stated I that tbe quantity of red clover or cow grass on hand was 3,237,436£ busheis. Can auy- ! thing be more misleadiug than to inform the i farmers of New Zeal -.an that the stacks in | hand of red clover are 3 237,436% bushels.— ' Yours, &c, Producjcr. i