Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1884 — OF INTEREST TO FAMERS. [ARTICLE]

OF INTEREST TO FAMERS.

Report of the Condition of the Crops in Europe. [Washington dispatch.] The report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for September has just been issued. It gives a very interesting report on the condition of the crops in Europe, India, and other foreign countries. In Europe, as compared with last year, the barley and oat acreages have fallen off 5 8-10 par cent and 2 8-10 per cent., respectively, and the slight gain of 2.4 per cent, in wheat has no significance beyond the fine condition of the land in the last sowing season. • • A dispatch to London from Calcutta expresses the opinion that India will be able to export 50,000,000 bushels of wheat to foreign countries this year. The Commissioner observes that the increase of exports from India fi om a few hundred thousand bushels per annum ten to twenty vears ago to 37,148,543 bushels in 1881-82, and 39,127,977 busbtels of sixty pounds for 1883-84 (year ended March 31), has excited the attention of the wheat-grswirg countries. It is known that India comes near to France and Russia in the volume of wheat production, and that these countries have only one out-ranking competitor —tho Unites! States of America. The Commissioner speaks of the folly of attempting to “feed the nations of the earth.” He says: “The area in wheat is now 38,500,000 acres, and 12,000,000 acres are cultivated in excess of the wants of the country, the produce of whidh must be sold abroad, mainly in Liverpool in competition ■with the grain of Russia, of South America, of Austria, and of India. It is sent 1.500 miles by land and 3,000 miles by sea, and from California more than half round the world to compete with the half-civilized fellahs of Egypt and the slaves of India. It is a competition unworthy of American freemen, and utterly unnecessary, being caused by bad calculation in the distribution of crop areas, for while we export onethird of the wheat production we import one-seventh of all the barley consumption and $100,000,000 worth of sugar at foreign valuation, which brings $150,000,008 in our local markets, in addition to the costs and profits of refining here. ”