AMERICAN AND AUSTRALIAN FARMING.

Otago Witness, Issue 1540, 14 May 1881, Page 7

AMERICAN AND AUSTRALIAN FARMING.

Some "plain facts about American farming" are told in a very plain and succinct fashion in the columns of - the Mark-lane Express— dated January 31st — by "A New Yorker." In treating lately of the prospects of wheatgrowing in Australia, occasion was taken to point out that America would,, in prooess of time, require for her own population nearly all the wheat she would be able to grow, but that, owing to the immense extent of country yet unbroken by the plough, that consummation must be placed in the far distant future.* 'i >The probable decadence of American supplies, it was thought, could not be profitably discounted by the present goneration, and in spite of the facts stated by v New Yorker" and some other recent writers on " the wheat-fields of America," our own farmers will not be likely to

shape their courses as though a falling-off in the amount of American supplies were actually in progress. So far, the quantity of wheat and flour exported has continued to increase. From 38,995,755 bushels in 1871, it reached 180,304,u00 bushels in 1879, and the figures in 1880 will tot up still larger when the complete returns are to hand ; an estimate makes the surplus available for export amount to 205,000,000 bushels ; but as the average value per bushel is only 0.95.8d0l against 1.10.8d01, the value of the export is only 460,597,000d01, as against 497,008,803d0l in 1879. There waß an increase in the total area of winter wheat amounting to nearly 4 per cent. The largest increase was in Kansas, 13 per cent. ; in Ohio the increase was 3 ; and in Maryland and Missouri 2. Illinois and Pennsylvania, »oth large winter wheat growing States, report an increase only of 1 per cent, aach. Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia, and 3S"ew York, each.of which has large areas of wheat crop, all report a decline more or less, the principal cause being stated to be drought at seeding: time. This is the substance of the official report published by the Agricultural Department of the United States, and we quote it because of its bearing upon the " plain facts about American farming" we now present. Premising that farmers in England have been taught to believe that it is useless for them to continue to grow wheat, and that some of them think so beoause they are told that America can undersell and ruin the English farmer in his own market, "A New Yorker " says :— " There has never been a time when full tillage and high production were more necessary in England — more especially of wheat— than now. The time is near at hand when America will not have any surplus wheat. The time is not very far off when America will cease to be a wheat-exporting country. The •yitem (properly want of system) under which wheat is grown on the same land continuously has produced effects that would astonish the world if they were known. Not one of the Eastern Statea grows one-fifth of the wheat requißlte for home consumption. The Southern Stateß are not wheat-growing States, nor are the Northern. The West produces nearly all the wheat that is grown in the United States, and the impoverishment of the lands of the West by continual wheat crops has rendered one-half of the lands unprofitable. The rest will be brought to that condition. It is only a question of time. When that time shall have come, the whole country will 1 exhibit the spectacle that is bo" common in the Eastern seaboard States— lands un tilled, buildings falling, farms deserted, sterility, desolation. Imagination has nothing to do with that picture. In the State of New York (the Empire State, aa it is called) you may travel day after day and never see a sheep. Cows are found here and there, very often Bkin and bone. No stock is kept but a trotting colt, whose owner always expects that he 'will beat the fastest horse on record.' There is no topdresaing, no manuring, no old grass land, no clean land, no farming, no stacks, in the Empire State. It is the same in Canada. They have better stock there, and more of it ; but there is no real farming in Canada. Everywhere may be leen the evidence of waste and decay. " As an example, between Quebeo and Montreal, on the southern aide of the St. Lawrence, is a tract traversed by a railway, comprising thousands of square miles — once a fine alluvial soil, rioh and fertile, bearing golden crops of wheat, but now unoccupied, matted with couch grass as fine as thread, the last thing that lingers on upon the impoverished soil, and that last thing starving. In Upper Canada (Ontario) a similar condition of things exists. " They have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs." Broadly speaking, "A New Yorker " alleges that there is no farming in America. " Tearing up a large tract of land by the power of capital and the use of steam-driven machinery, sowing for a few years with wheat, and then leaving it, is called high farming there, and the British farmer is ridiculed because he does not adopt the same plan." Of farming that maintains and inoreases the fertility of the soil there is no example in the United States.

Our country readers will, perhaps, think that this account of farming in America would have served very nearly aB a description of farming in Victoria and South Australia. The system of wheatgrowing is alike in each instance ; it is a system of skimming the cream off the surface of the land and then leaving it. But, happily, the parallel is incomplete as far a> Victoria is concerned. Much of the land that has been exhausted by selectors has fallen into the hands of graziers, whose flocks have turned it to useful account, and will render it again fit for growing an occasional crop of wheat — enough at all times, possibly, for the consumption of the Colony. The evidence of our correspondents, supplied in their harvest reports, has been one tone ; the value of a flock upon the farm is universally recognised. Those who have contrived to keep sheep find their account not only in a cheap supply of meat, but in the annual clip and the increase of numbers, often amounting in certain breeds to 100 per cent. The greatest difficulty of the poorer selectors is to provide sheep-proof fences ; whibt so many of them are unable to pay the small tribute annually due to the State, that they cannot do much towards supplying the want of enclosures. That the Bystena of giving land to men without capital to work it is a grave error \» patent to all, especially to those who

are the victims of it. In the United States, we are told, " the men living on their own land, in the old settled districts, who are called farmers, are in every respect Inferior to the English farmer, who is only a tenant. The profits of a tenant farmer in England are 10 times greater from a similar quantity of land than those of theownerfarmer in America. The American is poorly fed, drinks liquor that a man breaking stones on an English highway would despise, is meanly clad and poorly housed. How ia that when he is living on his own freehold ? He is the owner of the land subject to a proviso for redemption, which he is unable to observe ; and he is allowed to remain in possession because his landlord cannot sell the land, because he cannot find a purchaser. Landlord? Well, call him mortgagee." . . " The freeholder pays as much interest as he can, and the mortgagee waits for better times. What difference does it make to the occupier of a farm whether he has to hand over his earnings to one who is called landlord, or to one who is called mortgagee 1 The landlord of England builds, and repairs, and improves his land for the mutual benefit of himself and hia tenants. The American mortgagee draws his interest when he can get it, and that is all he does." Will this picture serve for the portrait of any people in this country, and is it such a picture as ought to represent any olass in a country possessing the finest soil and a climate that is almost an alternation of spring and summer, and where winter, as represented in England and America, is practically unknown ? That it does pourtray the condition of a large number of individuals in Victoria and South Australia may be learnt at any moment from the files of the Gazette. The only bright streak in the Victorian element ia the general recognition that we see of the error of the system, and of the way (when the means are available) out of it.