in 1846 of the Importation Act of 1815 (55 Geo.3c.26)—the Corn Laws—that
had imposed steep import duties on cereals. International trade in perishable
goods was becoming less hazardous and less costly. Transportation by sea
became faster and cheaper with the development of clippers and the intro-
duction of steam. The use of hardwood and iron offered better protection for
biodegradable cargoes. Improvements in agricultural technology in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century would make broadacre farming feasible in
pioneering colonies where labour was in short supply.^1
Australia’s early settlers, like their North American predecessors, had strug-
gled to make unfamiliar and seemingly lifeless soils productive, a task driving
them at times to the point of despair. But in the space of two generations,
Australia’s prospects had been transformed. The new colony of South Austra-
lia had developed a new system of settlement, enticing migrants with the
promise of land. Its early success was remarkable. In 1847, a mere eleven years
into the life of the newly-founded colony, the editor of theSouth Australian
Register, John Stephens, wrote an open letter to his former countrymen in the
motherland inviting them to emigrate to‘one of the most favoured portions
of the Great Southern Land’(Stephens 1847, p. 1). His letter described the
bounty:
The settlers may be said to lack for nothing, for, by the blessing of the Most High
upon their labours, they have not only bread enough to spare, but their garners are
so full that those who cultivated for the supply of thirty thousand souls, have lately
been able to send over sea, to British ports, more than thrice thirty thousand
bushels of wheat which challenge a comparison with any grown in any other
part of the world; and still they have thousands of superfluous bushels to sell.
‘We are’, say the growers,‘compelled to send it away for a market, because people
do notflock here fast enough to eat our bread stuff’. (Stephens 1847, p. 1)Australia was at the forefront of agricultural innovation in the second half of the
nineteenth century, spurred by the challenge of overcoming the continent’s
soil, climate, and geography, and the shortage and expense of labour. Mechan-
ical innovation, such as the invention of the stump-jump plough, Ridley’s
stripper, and the Sunshine harvester, increased efficiency and lowered costs.
Yet by 1914, Canada and the USA werefirmly established as Britain’sprincipal
suppliers of wheat, with Australia running a distant third. Canada, a relatively
late developer in grain production, began to open up a gap in terms of wheat
production in thefirst decade of the twentieth century. Until the 1880s, Canadian
and Australian wheat production grew ata similar pace. Subsequently, Canadian
production grew at a much faster rate than Australian production, and by
(^1) Broadacre farming:‘the farming of large tracts of land as a single operation resulting in
economies of scale’(Broadacre Farming 2013, p.244).
Nick Cater