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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4243, 26 October 1874, Page 3

The California “Farmers’ Ring” may defeat its object. By holding grain too long, the farmers may find themselves heavy losers. As it is, the failure to obtain freight, as expected, is causing serious loss to charterers, quite a fleet of ships having arrived at San Francisco under charter for grain, which cannot now bo filled up. But undoubtedly the grain growers of the State of California had reason to complain, in former years, of the way they wore turned into cash by the brokers. The law of supply and demand cannot, however, be safely disregarded, and although the holding back of the surplus produce of California would unquestionably disturb the European market, yet the last harvest has, oh the whole, been so prolific that no great disaster need bo anticipated, oven assuming that the wheat growers of that State are mad enough not to sell at present prices. In this conflict between the Farmers’ Ring and the Freight Ring, it is pretty certain that a groat deal of money will bo lost to the community at large. The official returns published by the United States Department of Agriculture for the month of August, give a good account of the crops harvested and those ripening in the field. From these returns it appears that the average of the wheat crop for 1874 may be set down at two or three per cent, above the average of the last ton years. “Insects, droughts, “ floods, and rust have seriously reduced “ the crops in many localities ; but in the “ general yield all these losses have been “ more than supplied.” California now stands first in the list as a wheat-producing State. But that is only of recent date, for a barrel of flour in 1849-50 fetched fifty dollars in San Francisco. The available wheat surplus of California, after feeding her seven hundred thousand inhabitants, is estimated at 000,000 tons, or about twenty millions of bushels ; and it is this surplus that is being hoarded. It has been calculated that if this surplus was transported overland to the Atlantic by carts, each cart talcing one ton, there would bo a string of carts pretty nearly three thousand miles in length; “the “head of the procession would bo enter- “ ing New York before the end of it had “ loft San Francisco.” Our readers will bo able to appreciate the freight requirements necessary to transport such an immense quantity of grain to the needing markets of the Old World, from this rough estimate of land transport. Wo may add further, that it represents a

year’s supply of flour for six millions of people. But prolific as the Golden State may be in wheat growing, she is being rapidly overtaken by a still younger sister—the State of Minnesota. “But “for the grasshoppers, would “have been first.” In spite of these insects, however, the surplus for export in Minnesota falls little short of that in California ; the home requirements, however, are much less. But maize is the most valuable cereal grown in the United States. The great floods and insect jsests combined have considerably diminished the yield that was promised after planting, inasmuch as a much larger area than usual was planted in the cotton States... But the crop will be an average of the last ten years notwithstanding, or eight hundred millions of bushels, which at fifty cents per bushel, represents four hundred million dollars ;—an immense sum added to the available capital of the United States. The Northern parts of New Zealand are admirably adapted for the growth of maize, which is imported largely from New South Wales, and averages from 4s. 6d. to ss. per bushel. Why our Northern fellow settlers do not cultivate it more largely than they do has often puzzled us. With respect to the year’s crop generally, the New York Herald has the following remarks: —“To sum up our “ agricultural products for the year, they “will in the aggregate (excepting tobacco) “ exceed the average of the last ten “ years, which have been ten years of “ bountiful crops, in fruits and roots, in “ cereals, and in cotton, rice, sugar, and “ tobacco. It follows that, profiting from “the pressure of last year’s financial “panic, we shall have abundant resources “ upon which to meet all the demands “for the interval to our next harvests, and an income to the national “ Treasury from our internal and tariff ‘ ‘ taxations which will amply supply its ‘ ‘ wants, and j ustify at an early day a very “ considerable lightening of these burdens “upon the people, without prejudice “to the sound policy of a gradual return “to specie payments,”