LEADING FEATURES OF THE WHEAT INDUSTRY 211 



these " exploiters " of the soil will be found. The United 

 States has experienced the effects of such predatory 

 cultivation. Canada and the Argentine are experiencing 

 it to-day. New Zealand, too, has tasted the "bitters" 

 and "sweets" of extensive cropping, but the rapid and 

 serious fall in agricultural products in the early "nine- 

 ties," the stimulus given to pastoral interests by the 

 development of the frozen meat industry at the same 

 time, and the dawn of more enlightened methods of 

 farming came in time to counteract the effects of such 

 predatory cultivation. 



The result of this movement towards far-seeing and 

 beneficial methods of cropping the soil can best be seen 

 in the increased yield of wheat per acre during the past 

 twenty years. This phenomenon of increasing yield is 

 the result of two causes, the exact influence of each of 

 which it is difficult to measure. The decrease in the area 

 of production, by causing the margin to recede, has 

 exerted considerable influence in this direction, but even 

 so, the increase in yield has been so great, no less than 

 10 bushels per acre since 1893, that it is obvious there 

 has been some other influence operating. This factor 

 is summed up in the greatly improved methods of culti- 

 vation of the last two decades, notably in the case of 

 Canterbury, where the area in acres has been reduced 

 relatively less than in Otago. But Canterbury shows 

 an absolute rise in yield, almost twice as great as the 

 increase in yield for Otago, and for the past six years 

 has shown a higher yield per acre than Otago, despite 

 the fact that the latter province has a differential 

 advantage from the point of view of soil fertility. 



These observations then lead to the conclusion that 

 farming methods have greatly improved of recent years, 

 and it is unquestionable that New Zealand farming 

 methods are relatively superior to those of any other 

 new country, though they are undoubtedly surpassed 



