The Crops in Canterbury.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2048, 28 March 1887, Page 2

The Crops in Canterbury.

According to the lately published agricultural statistics, the yield ot wheat in Canterbury this year is a trifle over four million bushels, being more than a million bushels in excess of that of last year. The increase in the total return nf oats,though smaller, is considfjrable, and amounts to more than eight hundred thousand bushels. The falling off is, of course, proportionately erea:er than the improve ment in the other cereals, but the barley crop in Canterbury is a minor matter and threatens to eventually fall into utter insignificance; its bushels are far outnumbered by the grass seed crops in that part of the colony. In root crops, too, this harvest holds its own well, though it certainly does not occupy the excellent comparative place it would have held had not the excessive drought of the preceding summer half ruined the turnips, and caused the turnip fields to be sown down in cereals. But, after all, the most thoroughly gratifying feature of the season is the quality of the grain harvested. Prices just now are anything but tiptop, but the European wheat market's outlook is less gloomy than that of two years ago, and the demand for oats in New South Wales is sufficiently good to keep the hearts of growers from drooping. The farmers are probably in better heart just now than tor several seasons past. That even severe and continued depression has not been able to stop the settlement of the soil and development of the farming industry in this part of New Zealand, the harvest statistics show in the most encouraging manner. After three of the worst years ever known to Now Zealand farmers, we note an increase of 404 holdings. If such an advance, says the Lyttelton Times, can be maintained in years of low prices and indifferent harvests, and among a debt ridden race of agriculturalists, what may we not fairly expect when the horizon brightens ?