WHEAT IN VICTORIA.

Clutha Leader, Volume XX, Issue 1035, 25 May 1894, Page 3

WHEAT IN VICTORIA.

Wheat is being sold at some of the country terminal railway stations of Victoria at Is 9d per bushel. Efforts are being made to obtain lower rates of carnage than those at present in force, but the appeals to the Government so far have been unsuccessful. The cartage of the grain crop from the farms to the railway depots may be estimated at not less than 3d per bushel, and thus it appears that the farmer's receipts for labor, the use of land, seed and farm plants will not come to much more than the rate of 15s per acre cultivated. Breadstuff? are dearer here than in Victoria, but are still low-pricpd. Customs tariffs cannot rule the world's markets or check over production. If the lands of Australia are to be cultivated for wheat growing, the workers must content themselves with the quotations of London's wellknown Mark Lane. The wheat market is subject to extraordinary fluctuations. Wheat grown here next year may be worth 3s 6d per bushel on the farms. It is the average of prices extending over several years which should be taken as the fair test of prices. There has been in this market since 1864, when milling wheat sold at 7s 6d per bushel, and in 1866, when it touched 9s 7 Jd, a gradual but irregular reduction in prices. In 1879 wheat sold in Sydney at ss, but the lowest price which it brought between that year and 1892 was in 1890, when sales were made at 3s 9d per bushel. The average of the last 10 years is about 3s per bushel. The average price obtained by farmers over the period stated may not have been more than 3s per bushel — a price which, though low, is large enough to give a moderately fair return for wheat growing in New South Wales.