Wheat cultivation has been integral to Camden’s history since European settlement. The fertile soils of the region facilitated significant wheat production, bolstering the local economy, and shaping agricultural practices. Challenges such as wheat rust-a devastating fungal disease-greatly reduced yields in the second half of the 19th Century.
Efforts to combat the impact of rusts are ongoing, with research being conducted at the University of Sydney Plant Breeding Institute at Cobbitty.
In the early forties the attention of the whole of the Camden district was turned to wheat-growing, and much activity in that direction was seen on all farms, practically all clearing leases were transformed into wheat farms, and a good many aboriginals were employed in the fields.
The Macarthurs also devoted large areas to the cereal, and for approximately twenty years much success was achieved. In 1848 crops were particularly heavy, yielding nearly forty bushels to the acre. The Macarthur's Estate alone produced 40,000 bushels of grain. Camden flour received a particularly good name and sold readily in the Sydney market, and the high price of the grain, up to 8/- a bushel, induced the farmers to sow large areas.
The harvesting of the grain in those days may have been somewhat primitive, differing considerably from modern mechanical devices, but the result was effective.
In the first place crops had to be cut with the old-fashioned reaping-hook, and carried to where the grain had to be threshed. When threshing operations commenced the men used beaters, two sticks or pieces of wood of different sizes joined together by a piece of green-hide. The larger stick was held in the operator's hands, and, swishing it over his shoulders, the shorter piece flopped on the heads of the wheat spread on the ground. Thus the grain was separated from the stalks and ears.
Aaron Biffin, himself a wheat farmer as far back as 1842, was the first to introduce a threshing machine into the district in the fifties, and with his son John, father of Mr. W. A. E. Biffin, of
Camden, accepted contracts for threshing in various parts of the district. In the early sixties the failure of crops, due to rust, ruined the venture.
To grind the wheat of the district a number of mills were established. The earliest of these was a watermill built and conducted by Henry Thompson, on the site where the Dairy Farmers' Cooperative Milk Coy's. Milk Depot now stands. In 1847 water power was superseded by steam. There were other mills in the town, a wind-mill erected near St. John's Church, and another, a more important one, on 'Windmill Hill,' now the site occupied by the Camden District Hospital. Flour mills were also working at Kirkham, Luddenham, Bringelly, The Oaks and at Appin. 1858 Henry Thompson proceeded to erect a new mill on an extensive scale, occupying the site opposite the old mill, which some years afterwards was added to and adapted as a tweed mill. In 1861 and 1863 rust made its appearance and ruined the industry.