Agricultural Affairs in America.

Otago Witness, Issue 1762, 29 August 1885, Page 14

Agricultural Affairs in America.

The agricultural situation in America becomes more gloomy every month. At the beginning of April the condition of the winter-sown wheat in the United States was represented by 77 in the returns' of the Department of Agriculture. A month later it had fallen to 76, and at the beginning of June it had further declined to G2. This is the lowest figure which the Department has ever had to publish for Uic prospects of winter wheat. The reports from the Fanners' Associations are even gloomier than the official statements. But making every allowance for the natural despondencj* over such untoward prospects, it is evident that the wheat crop of America will this autumn be one of the smallest and the least available for exportation of any recent year. 207,000,000 quarters is the presently estimated produce of the winter wheat, and 153,000,000 quarters of the spring wheat. This last looks much better than in some recent years, its present figure being 97. With such an estimate from the principal source of supply of our wheat trade, it is an indication of the extreme dulness of trade that there is not the slightest sign of an upward movement in the grain market. The . collapse of the upward movement of prices at the time of the war scare has been so thorough, and the influence of the immense shipments of grain within the last few weeks so marked, that the movement is still distinctly downward, and the price is now quite 3s below the average of the low figures current this time last year. But the visible supply in America is quickly diminishing, and' the chances are that with the harvest there will come some more activity in the wheat trade, with rather higher prices for the farmer, on this side of the Atlantic at least. — Dundee Advertiser.