Wheat

IMG:p612_4.png:Chinese characters hsiao mai. Wheat is sown in Manchuria in March and harvested in June, an acre requiring 17 to 22 lbs. of seed and yielding from 1,100 to 1,600 lbs. of grain. Hosie gives the wheat yield per acre in Ssiich'uan as 1,900 lbs., producing 1,100 lbs. of flour. In Manchuria the yield is only 1,000 lbs. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 255, gives the yield in Shantung as 42 bushels per acre, as against 23.3 bushels in Manchuria which is given in Far Eastern Review, Feb., 1909. Wheat is grown in every province of China, but is a crop of far more importance in the north than in the south, where it merely supplements rice as a winter crop. A great deal is grown in the Great Plain, but Manchuria is par excellence the wheat land of China, being indeed an ideal wheat field. Parker has estimated that the wheat lands of Manchuria and E. Mongolia, developed and undeveloped, are capable of producing from 300,000 to 400,000 bushels of spring-sown hard wheat, even with native methods of culture. This territory is north of the 40th degree of N. latitude. The native wheats are mostly of the bearded and smooth chaff type, though fife, blue-stem, and Canadian club types are also seen. The yield is much le per unit than that of millet or maize, so that tlie people do not cultivate wheat as much as they should, but yearly this prejudice is being broken, as the flour industry is developed. The production of flour in China is yearly increasing, as the taste of the people I'or the article develops. The importation of foreign flour is still very large, but the local produce is steadily forging its way ahead. In Manchuria the Harbin district has 19 miles (10 in Harbin itself), turning out nearly 140,000 tons yearly; Tiehling (S. Manchuria) has a very large mill; in the Yangtze Valley there are 32 (including 15 at Shanghai and 5 at Hankow), producing over 60,000 sacks daily, and there are a dozen in other provinces. In 1915 nearly three IMG:p612_5.png:Chinese characters a quarter million piculs of flour were sent out from the milling centres to other towns. Wilson noted no fewer than five distinct varieties of wheat, both "red" and "white," awned and awnle . Some of the North China wheats, owing to their rapid coming to maturity, are being tried in England, seed having been sent to Profe or BiFFEN of Cambridge. In W. Ssuch'uan 8,000 to 10,500 feet represents the wheat-growing altitude. In 1916 the export was wheat, pels. 1,155,179, value Hk.Tls. 2,223,133; flour, pels. 289,747, Tls. 1,141,707.