AUSTRALIAN WHEAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20604, 1 July 1930, Page 13

AUSTRALIAN WHEAT.

RECORD CROP PREDICTED.

GREAT AREA CULTIVATED. ADVANCE IN RICE-GROWING. Australian visitors who arrived by the Aorangi yesterday predict a record season for wheat throughout tlie Commonwealth this year. In order to counteract the disheartening effects of industrial depression farmers, tliey said, had a greater area in seed than over before.

Sir Joseph Carruthers, who is proceeding to Honolulu, estimated that the wheat crop this year would bo well over 200,000,000 bushels for tho Commonwealth, and that New South Wales' share would touch 80,000,000 bushels, which would constitute a record. Farmers had been fully seized with the importance of recovering their losses, and had planted an exceptionally largo area. It was interesting to note tho advance mado in tho cultivation of rice, Sir Joseph added. Australia was beginning to be independent of outsido supplies of that cereal, tho local product finding a ready gale in tho Commonwealth. That was all the more important in view of the recent world shortage of rice. Australia owed its rice-growing industry to a woman, he added. Sonio ten years ago Miss Grant, daughter of a Murrumbidgeo pastoralist, who was constantly called upon to face drought and hardship on a remote station, came across the subject of rice cultivation in tho course of her reading. She decided to give the idea practical application in tho irrigated area in which sho lived, and her early experiments soon developed into a pronounced commercial success. She was now reaping huge crops in the Yanko irrigation area, and her success hud induced many other people to follow her lead. She had placed rice-growing on the Australian map.