68 THE FARMER'S OUTLOOK 



over a long period with a marked tendency to 

 improve. 



Some indication of the causes which bring about 

 these vicissitudes may help us to understand them. 

 The weather conditions prevailing when ploughing 

 for the coming crop is in progress, or the seed 

 sown may not only affect the yield, but restrict 

 the acreage. There follows the growing season, 

 necessarily more prolonged in winter than in 

 spring wheat, and finally the harvest. It is 

 immediately preceding and at harvest time that 

 the Argentine, and to a lesser degree, the Canadian 

 conditions compare unfavourably with America. 

 In both countries frost often does considerable 

 damage to the crop when wheat is in flower or 

 " in the milk." In the Argentine no period of 

 bright sunshine to ripen the crop, or fine weather 

 to harvest it can be expected, let alone relied upon. 

 The Argentine crop of 1911-12, which promised 

 exceedingly well up to the harvest, was seriously 

 damaged, if not destroyed by bad weather. With 

 Canada a much larger proportion of spring wheat 

 — nine-tenths spring to one-tenth fall — as against 

 two-fifths spring and three-fifths winter wheat 

 in the States 1 — throws the work of harvesting 

 into a shorter period and extends it, owing to 

 the higher latitude of Canada's wheat belt, into 



1 The proportions of spring to fall wheat are those for 

 1911. 



