102 WHEAT PRODUCTION IN NEW ZEALAND 
Debt was soon contracted, and it is necessary to bear this 
in mind when considering the events of the eighties. 
A fresh development had commenced in the late 
‘‘seventies’’ when the large estates, which had been pro- 
cured in the early days by the squatters, were devoted 
to cereal growing. These large estates, formerly used 
for grazing sheep, were broken up and thousands of acres 
were sown in wheat. Many attempts were thus made to 
commence wheat production on a large scale, but it was 
attended by certain disadvantages, and when prices 
began to fall, these ‘‘bonanza’’ farms ( the term applied 
to the large wheat farms of America) offered very small, 
if any, profits. The exact nature of these disadvan- 
tages will be indicated later, but it is sufficient to note 
here that the large estate was the outstanding feature 
of wheat production for the twenty years succeeding the 
middle ‘‘seventies.’’* 
The forces, then, which led to the great progress in 
wheat production after 1870 were mainly the decline in 
the gold production leaving a surplus of labour and 
capital for other industries, the high prices of wheat, 
the disadvantages of sheep farming due to the low prices 
of mutton and the total lack of demand for such, the 
suitability of the Canterbury Plains for rapidity and 
ease of cultivation, and lastly the ambitious borrowing 
policy of Sir Julius Vogel by which railways were 
opened up, roads and bridges constructed, and the rate 
of the general development of the country greatly 
accelerated. 
*The nature of this expansion is reflected in the movements 
in the price of agricultural land in Canterbury. For the graph 
of this given on page 104 I am indebted to Mr. F. R. Callaghan, 
who recently made an investigation into ‘‘The History of Land 
Values in Canterbury.’’ The outstanding feature of the graph 
is the rapid rise in the ‘‘seventies’’ culminating in the land 
boom of 1878. ‘The rise since 1895 must be attributed to the 
successful introduction of sheep farming, the improved methods 
of cultivation, the development of mixed farming, and most 
important of all, the rapid rise in the prices of farm products. 
