CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS. 693 
In the forecasts offered ten years ago Argentina as a wheat-grower was 
given a dozen years from 1898 to reach a possible acreage of 12,000,000 acres. 
She has reached that figure and passed it in less than a decade, and later 
current official estimates seem to concede to that region a close approxima- 
tion to 15,000,000 acres to-day. As the actual pace here has bettered so 
considerably that prophesied, one may legitimately question the further 
limitations which allowed to Argentina no prospect of ever reaching a 
wheat area of 30,000,000 acres at any time. That these prophecies by no 
means coincide with later and probably quite similarly vague forecasts in the 
other direction goes without saying. In a recent official publication by the 
U.S.A. Government containing the report of an expert on the resources of 
Argentina and her farming methods, the competitive prospects of the great 
grain-exporting Republic of the South were scarcely so lightly treated. 
For my own part I rather agree with an officer of the Argentine Govern- 
ment there quoted (Sefior Tidblom), who candidly admits that it was 
impossible with any accuracy to forecast the ultimate wheat area of Argen- 
tina, although I observe he adds that there were “more than 80,000,000 acres 
in the Republic that could be immediately devoted to successful wheat- 
farming if we had the farmers to do it.’ I have seen, though I could not 
accept, even more sanguine estimates in other quarters, which, with a yield 
of only ten bushels per acre, promised a crop of 1,238,000,000 bushels at 
some future date, and would involve an area of wheat land approaching 
124,000,000 acres. 
No one, I think, can note the strides which Argentina has taken in 
rapidly augmenting her wheat areas and exports, and that concurrently 
with the commanding place she is assuming as a meat rearer and exporter 
to the older peoples of Europe, without some recognition that a great future 
is possible. On the other hand, apart from climatic conditions, the future 
must be largely governed by the factor of population ; and the nature of tha 
Italian immigrants, their mode of culture, their non-intention in many 
instances to remain and own the land or identify themselves with the 
country—preferring to exploit one farm after another and reside on them 
until they make a small competence wherewith to return to Europe—are all 
yeasons against the extremely favourable prospects which I have here 
adyerted to. 
Small relatively to the great extent of surface included in the Common- 
wealth of Australia is the proportion under wheat, but the Commonwealth 
is none the less as a rule an exporter. A little more than thirty years ago 
only about 1,400,000 acres were grown. This seems to have been a g 
deal more than doubled in the five years 1876-81, when a much smaller 
rate of increase followed for fifteen years—a check apparently reflecting the 
same tendency to arrest which we have seen so typically illustrated in the 
United States. Again, after 1896, just as in the great Western Republic, 
wheat-growing became again in favour, and the rapid spurt which followed 
brought the Commonwealth total to 5,700,000 acres as the century closed. 
Thereafter the rate of growth seemed checked anew, and after passing 
a maximum of just under 6,300,000 acres, it stands to-day under 6,000,000 
acres. Twice during the last twenty years has Australia shown on 
balance a net importation of wheat, but from 1903 to 1907 the quantity 
exported has averaged 36,000,000 bushels, and it is not without interest to 
observe that the Australian exports of the present century have not all been 
consumed in Britain—South Africa, the western coasts of South America, 
and even some parts of India sharing in the surplus product of the 
/Antipodean Continent. 
The conditions and the future of Australian wheat have been quite 
recently dealt with in an interesting paper by Mr. A. E. Humphreys, read 
before the Society of Arts in London. It is here pointed out that the soils 
on which it is grown are rich in assimilable nitrogen, requiring little 
