LEADING FEATURES OF THE WHEAT INDUSTRY 189 
acres. Both provinces present varying types of land 
from rich fertile plains to rugged mountainous country. 
The land of Canterbury is divisible into three main — 
classes—arable, pastoral, and waste lands. The arable 
land is composed of the Canterbury Plains and the 
Downs of South Canterbury, comprising an area of 
about 24 million acres. Of the remaining land, some 7 
million acres, about 5 million acres are suitable for 
pastoral farming, while the rest, highly mountainous 
country, riverbeds, lakes, and forests, is unfitted for 
occupation. 
In Otago, a smaller proportion of land is available for 
wheat growing, for here no great plain is found within 
the wheat area, which is confined to the northern portion 
of the province and contains an area suitable for wheat 
production of, probably, not more than 500,000 acres. 
The nature and character of this land have already 
been considered in Chapter III., but the whole area is 
admirably suited for the production of wheat, and the 
possibilities of New Zealand as a producer of wheat can 
‘be more readily comprehended when this fact is realised. 
Of the area of 3,000,000 acres suitable for the growth 
of the cereal, and this is a conservative estimate, 750,000 
acres could be devoted to wheat growing annually. If 
we, then, make the supposition that the yield per acre 
on account of the extension of the margin would be 
reduced to, say, 25 bushels, New Zealand would then 
produce 18,750,000 bushels each year. This could be 
done, moreover, without any great disturbance in the 
present state of rural occupation, were sufficient supplies 
of capital and labour available. This consideration, in 
view of the desired increase in primary production on 
account of the War, opens up an interesting line of 
investigation which is not strictly relevant to present 
