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.