ESTIMATES AND RESULTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16824, 7 April 1915, Page 6

ESTIMATES AND RESULTS.

A rABMER correspondent whose letter we publish this morning argues that the wheat threshing returns upori which we commented the other day aro by no moans reliable. His case is that the threshing mill owners, or contractors, arc really not in a position to mako accurate reports showing yields per acre, for the reason thatthey do not know the areas from which is taken the wheat that they thresh. If that be so, then the Government Statistician in compiling and issuing the returns has simply been wasting time and money. The correspondent suggests that the farmers' estimates aro the only reliable data and that these are likely to overstate tho position, because the average grower, anxious to "go one better" than his neighbour, is apt to forecast •a heavier crop than. can reasonably bo anticipated. The folly of having sets of statistics prepared and published if they really do not give the information they purport to give is, of course, quite plain; and it would be usoless, wo cannot deny, to pretend that tho harvest has been more* prolific than is actually tho case. But. wo are not at all convinced that our correspondent is right and the authorities are wrong. The threshing mill owners make returns monthly under the Consns and Statistics Act, and when those returns are sufficiently complete in respect of any partioular district or county, for which the Statistician has already secured information as to „area, together with growers' estimates, it is a matter jf simple arithmetic for the Government official to compare actual yields with forecasts and thus state tho true position for public information. If the Statistician knows that there aro, say, a thousand acres laid down in wheat in a given county and the threshing contractor knows, and reports, that he has threshed thirty-five thousand bushels of wheat in that county, the averago yield is known to be thirtyfive bushels to the acre, no mattei' what the individual estimates may have indicated; and it is clearly unnecessary, for the purposes of this calculation, for tho threshing mill owner to have accurate knowledge, or any knowledge, as to area. The point raised is of some importance, and not only because our correspondent's contention, if it were sound, would show Government figures to be valueless. According to official statistics, tho wheat crop is proving considerably hoavier than the figures supplied by j farmers had shown likely, and thus Nature by her bountcousness had help-; ed to destroy the argument that tho seven-shilling bushel, or thereabouts, is warranted by a serious shortage of grain. In the circumstances wo aro glad to say that wo believe the actual threshing returns are compiled on v system sufficiently sound to make them more reliable for practical purposes than farmers' estimates. Our correspondent, in fact, has tried bo prove too much when ho suggests that tho tendency is. for growers to compete as to which will make the most optimistic forecast, for the threshing results prove tho opposite.