Under the heading of crops for which our farmers enjoy a monopoly in a limited but protected market—or natural advantages which are equivalent to a partial monopoly—are sugar, maize, tomatoes, tropical and citrus fruits, and cigar tobacco. The Commonwealth tariff gives Queensland a practical monopoly in Australia for sugar. She has a virtual monopoly for tropical fruits, being the only State in which these are produced in excess of local requirements. The warmer climate and earlier crop give her temporary command of the Southern markets for citrus fruits, tomatoes, maize, and a number of minor products, before they mature in the cooler South, an advantage that will extend in time to many other crops, with the increasing interchange arising from interstate free trade.
Chief among products which can be placed as cheaply on the market as in other countries are the cereals. Queensland has all the essentials of a great grain-producing country. Her name does not yet figure among the list of exporters of foodstuffs, but the reasons for her backwardness are not far to seek.
At the close of 1908 the number of people in the State, scattered over its 670,500 square miles of territory, was only 558,000—little more than the population of Sydney or Melbourne, and less than that of several second-class cities in the mother country. Probably not more than ten per cent. of the people are engaged in farming, but, acre for acre and man for man, Queensland compares favourably with countries that are regarded as primarily agricultural. The lands most sought after have been scrub, deep alluvial flats, and black and chocolate loams; and, until recently, it was on land of this kind that most of the wheat and barley was grown. Heavy crops were harvested, as a rule, but the results were not uniformly satisfactory, and it is now recognised that these highly fertile lands are better suited for other forms of cultivation than the growth of cereals. For several years, incoming selectors—many Southern wheat farmers from preference—have been settling to the west of the heavy Downs country on the lighter soils of ridge and plain. From these lands, of which Queensland has a practically unlimited supply, but which the settlers of twenty or even ten years ago regarded as poor, more and more of the wheat crop is now coming. With less labour and at less expense than on the heavy soils, the farmer has greater certainty of a payable yield.
Sugar has first place among agricultural products from Port Douglas to the Mary River, followed by maize and the luscious fruits of the tropics. From Maryborough to the Tweed, maize takes precedence of sugar. Crops of less importance are potatoes, pumpkins, citrus fruits, pineapples, and bananas. In the Central and Southern divisions of the coastal belt, where dairying is the chief industry, large areas are under fodder crops and permanent grasses. From the Northern section of the littoral, thousands of bunches of bananas are shipped weekly to the South. Mangoes and pineapples are also sent South in very considerable quantities. Citrus fruits and tomatoes ripen at least two months earlier in North Queensland than in New South Wales and Victoria, and this fact has led to an important and profitable trade in these commodities being opened up with Sydney and Melbourne. The spices and food and other economic plants of the tropics grow to perfection north of Mackay. Cigar tobacco of good quality is being grown in small quantities in several parts of the North, and the Commonwealth bounty and the willingness of manufacturers to take the leaf should lead in time to the bulk of the cigars consumed in Australia being made from Queensland leaf. Despite the heat and humidity of the climate, dairying is being carried on with success as far north as Cairns, and at Atherton on the hinterland it promises to become an important industry.
Except on the Darling Downs, progress on the tableland has been retarded until a comparatively recent date through the land being locked up in pastoral leaseholds. At Atherton in the North and on the Burnett lands in the South, however, agricultural settlement is proceeding by leaps and bounds. Following the usual practice on scrub land, maize and grasses are the principal objects of culture, as they can be planted among the fallen timber and converted into milk long before the land can be put under the plough.
The Darling Downs, famous for their beauty and fertility, well deserve their title of "Garden of Queensland." Other districts, notably Atherton and the Burnett, have as good land, and the latter may have an equal area; but nowhere can there be seen 4,000,000 acres of splendid agricultural country requiring so little labour to bring it under cultivation. Far beyond the horizon stretch these fine lands, formerly clothed with nutritious natural grasses, but now passing into cultivation and dotted over with prosperous homesteads. More than 70 per cent. of the wheat, oats, and barley of Queensland comes from the Downs, which are capable of supporting a population far larger than the whole State now contains. Shipments of malting barley grown on the Downs attracted such favourable notice in England a few years back that offers were made to buy large quantities, and modern and well-equipped malting houses have since been built at Toowoomba and Warwick by a leading firm of English maltsters. Oats are grown for hay, no grain being ground into meal. There is an increasing tendency, founded on experience, to look to the lighter soils for cereal production, and to put the heavier volcanic soils of the Eastern Downs to uses for which they are better adapted. To dairying much of the prosperity of the Downs farmers is due. Butter and cheese factories have been erected every few miles along the railway line, and the number of cream-cans awaiting transport on every platform bear striking testimony to the importance of the industry. Most of the fruits of Northern and Southern Europe flourish, and the many fine orchards between Stanthorpe and the New South Wales border are giving handsome returns to their fortunate owners. In the neighbourhood of Texas, to the west of Warwick, pipe tobacco of fine flavour is being cultivated. The extension of the railway from Warwick to Goondiwindi has rendered available additional areas suitable for this crop, and circumstances favour the creation of a great industry.
The boundless plains of the West, where the annual rainfall varies from 30 inches to 10 inches, are the seat of the pastoral industry, and agriculture is still in its infancy. In the vicinity of Roma, on the Southern and Western Railway, wheat is the staple crop. Further West, on river banks and adjacent to artesian bores, vegetables, grapes, and oranges are grown. The oranges at Barcaldine, in the Central West, have been pronounced by the Government Fruit Expert to be the finest he has seen. In the same locality areas of grain, lucerne, and other hay crops show the capabilities of the plain lands when irrigated; but these small patches do not constitute an industry. The soil has in it all the elements of fertility, and is of inexhaustible depth; but, unhappily, the rainy season does not coincide with the period of growth of the cereals for which these lands seem otherwise intended by Nature; and until science becomes the handmaid of husbandry, and irrigation is demonstrated to be both practicable and remunerative, agriculture is likely to make little headway in the West.
PINEAPPLE FARM, WOOMBYE, NORTH COAST RAILWAY
