It is a well-known fact that cultivators often sell their seed corn so advanced them, in order to buy some other corn known to them as more suited to their land, and they are often justified, perhaps, in so doing.
The issues are made by District Commissioners to selected applicants who are believed to be unable to buy seed for cash. The average annual issues, for the last five years, have been: wheat, 38,013 kilés; barley, 31,479 kilés.
Wheat
In ancient times, when the population numbered about 1,100,000, the Island was said to be self-supporting in the matter of wheat. Taking the annual consumption of wheat per head of population at 8 bushels (Gennadius's Report on the Agriculture of Cyprus, Part I, p. 8) and after making an allowance for seed, the annual production would then have been about 10,000,000 bushels. From British Consular Reports it appears that in 1863 the average produce was reckoned at 640,000 bushels. The average annual production of wheat for the ten years ended 1913, as shown in Blue Book Returns, was 2,292,827 kilés. For later years the figures are:
| Year. | Kilés. |
| 1914 | 1,924,336 |
| 1915 | 1,761,501 |
| 1916 | 1,524,484 |
| 1917 | 1,782,800 |
| 1918 | 2,424,570 |
Wheat is sown at the rate of 1 kilé per donum. The average yield per donum is 6 to 10 kilés, and varies between 3 to 4 kilés on dry land in a poor year, to 16 to 20 on the best lands in a good year. When rains are very late and spring weather is unfavourable, a farmer often fails to recover even the seed.
Much might be done to increase the yield by better methods of husbandry, by the use of improved implements for cultivating and reaping, and by the use of threshing machines. An immense quantity of grain is consumed by birds (larks, sparrows, doves, etc.), which at times literally strip the fields and continue their depredations on the threshing-floors.
Wheat is sown from October to December; a field which has had a winter crop is pastured after the harvest until January; in January and February it is broken up and cross ploughed and sown immediately after with a spring or summer crop.
The crop is cut about May-June. It is cut with a sickle (δρεπἁνι), tied into sheaves, and carried on donkeys or small carts to the threshing-floors. The sickle is larger than the European one, and is often provided with bells ("koudounia" or "sousounaria") to frighten the snakes, and the handles are ornamented with leather tassels.
Several varieties of wheat are grown in the Island, mostly of the hard kinds, these being preferred by millers.