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GENERAL AGRICULTURAL NOTES. 



[Sept. 1894. 



XIII.— GENERAL AGRICULTURAL NOTES. 

 Wheat Growing in Queensland. 



The Boai'cl of Agriculture have recently received from the 

 Under Secretary for Agriculture, Queensland, a copy of his 

 Report for 1892-93, which contains some observations by Mr. 

 E. M. Shelton on the prospects of wheat growiug in that Colony. 



Mr. Shelton observes that the progress of general farming in 

 the Colony has from the first been timid and hesitating. The 

 early settlers and their successors have been for the most part 

 men possessed of small means, and deficient knowledge and 

 experience of agriculture. Old-world agriculturists found in the 

 strange conditions of soil and climate prevailing in Queensland 

 obstacles which previous knowledge did not help much to 

 overcome. Under such unusual circumstances every cultivator 

 became perforce an experimenter, but the result of his endea- 

 vours has been chiefly a harvest of facts, often conflicting and 

 inconclusive. Moreover, ag.iculture has been, and is now to 

 some extent, looked upon as an avocation to be taken up only 

 as leisure from other callings permitted. The occupations which 

 have attracted men and capital to the colony have for the most 

 part been squatting, mining, and the various commercial enter- 

 prises connected therewith. So long as the best of pastoral 

 lands could be bought outright for a few shillings per acre, and 

 bullocks found a ready sale at 81. per head, while wool brought 

 Is. 2d. per lb., there was small temptation to the more arduous 

 and less certain business of arable farming. Agriculture in 

 Queensland may be said to have always been a last resort, 

 to have always waited on some other calling. 



Wheat culture has shared the general fate of agriculture in 

 the Colony. It Las been repeatedly taken up, chiefly in the 

 Darling Downs region, and as often abandoned, and the fields 

 allowed to revert to the original grass crop. The absence of 

 machinery for harvesting, the want of mills for grinding, to say 

 nothing of the lack of knowledge of varieties and methods of 

 culture suited to the Colony, sufficiently account for what other- 

 wise seem unaccountable fluctuations in the wheat record. 



As far back as 1867 the statistics of the Colony show a wheat 

 area of 2,657 acres. In 1870 the total yield for the year amounted 

 to 39,787 bushels, and this was increased to 81,161 bushels in 

 1873, while in 1891 the yield was 392,809 bushels— the largest 

 in the history of the Colony. On the other hand, in 1886 only 

 21,221 bushels were reaped in the entire Colony, while in 1888 

 there were cut for grain only 499 acres, which gave a yield of 

 8,265 bushels of grain. These fluctuations in the wheat yield 



