ENGLAND'S WHEAT REQUIREMENTS.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3123, 20 February 1879, Page 2

ENGLAND'S WHEAT REQUIREMENTS.

(pail mall gazette.)

Mr Caird has calculated that we shall require some 13,000,000 quarters of wheat from foreign countries this year to supplement the deficiency in our home production. This seems likely now to be an under estimate. But taking these figures, the outlook, in face of a falling export trade and general depression in every branch of business, is grave enough. At the current market price such an import of wheat will certainly not represent less than £30,000,000. Thus, for one article of food alone, we shall have to pay at the rate of nearly £1 per head of the population to foreign growers. No doubt we obtain the supply far cheaper than if we attempted to grow it at home, even if so large an amount could be profitably grown at all on these islands. But it is certainly a serious matter for ua that our principal ciources of supply —America and Russia —should show an increasing disinclination to be paid for their food in our manufactures. The protectioniit policy which has almost destroyed our iron and cotton trade with the United States has no doubt been disavautageous to that country, but it most certainly has also been damaging to us. We hare now to pay for our food import from America oat of the profits made in other directions instead of by the interchange of productions.