The morning call., 1891-06-07
TIE WHEAT CRoP OF 1890.

The statistician Of the Produce Exchange
has made public his estimate of the wheat
crop of the State for the year ending June
l, 1891. 1t fOots up 903 391 tons, 35S, 900 tons
less than the crop of 1889, and almost ex-
actly the same as the crop of 1888. For the
past thirteen years the crop of California has
averaged. one year with another. million
tons. Six times in that period namely. in
1889, 1886. 1888, 1881. 1880 and 1873, It has
overrun million: only once did il fall be-
low 500 900 tOns-that was in 1SS5-snd be-
sides this only once, in 1887, did it fall be-
low 900 900 tons. 1t is doubtful if any grain
growing State can show so uniform yield
the popular talk about periodical drOughts
in California to the contrary nOtwitbStand-
ing. 1t may be said broadly that one-four-
teenth of all the wheat grown in the
United States is grown in this State. and
that wheat consumers can rely upon its fur
nshing its quota with more certainty than
they can rely upon the crops OF Kansas, Ne
braSka. Minnesota or Dakota.
1t is now ten years since fruit began to
supeTsede wheat in the river valleys. Every
year since 1881 a certain proportion of land
which had been planted in wheat has been
set out in fruIt-tTees The process has
gone on steadily. the area converted increas-
ing measurablY each year. At the present
time the revOlutiol has invaded such coun-
ties rs COlUsa, Tehama, StanislauS and
MERGED, which have been banner wheat
counties ever since the birth Of agriculture
in this State. But the conversion Of wheat
fields into orchards does not seem to reduce
the wheat harvest. As much new land is
placed under cultivation and sowed with
wheat as is Withdrawn from wheat plant
ing. Pasture land and safeguarding country
are being plOwed. and so the aggregate crop
OF the State suffers no dimnuti0n.
The process may go on for some time to
come. No one can tell the area of arabic
land in California which is now desert or
used only for pasture. IL is almost GER
tainly larger than the area actually under
cultivation. When the President was here,
he tried to get some figures on the subject,
but even at the Government Land Office
they do not know how much Of the unsur-
veyed Government land is fit for the plow. If,
as seems likely, the price of wheat should
gradually work uD, so that the farmer in Cali
fornia could always rely upon getting, say
cent a pound on the farm for his crop, this
idle land would rapidly diminish. and tie
State might harvest 30 per cent more wheat
than it does without reducing the area de-
voted to fruit.
Writers who descant upon the cOmpeti-
ton Of such regions as India and Australia
in the wheat market, and upon the probable
increase Of the crop of the Northwestern"
States, such as Minnesota and Dakota, for
get that wheat is a commodity that will not
bear much railroad transportation. 1t costs
nearly all wheat of the Punjaub and of Dude
IS worth to carry it to market, as 1t must be
transported over a thousand miles by rail
before it reaches the seaboard. So in Aus
tralia. 1t costs so much to put the wheat Of
Victoria and Adelaide on board ship that
there is little or nothing left for the farmer.
The same rule applies to those States Of the
interior Of the continent which are far from
natural waterways. The farmers of the
valleys and of the Northwest complain that
the railroads charge so much to move the
wheat to the Atlantic seaboard that the pro-
Queer is impoverished.
Here is where California has the advan-
tage over its competitors in the wheat mar
ket. Our wheat fields lie within such easy
reach of Port Costa and San Francisco that
their crop can be laid down in the port of
Liverpool for less money than the wheat of
Dakota. the Purjaub OF Adelaide; and this
is a distinction which time cannot alter.