OCR Text |
Show Corn Carry-Over No Cause for Concern Acreage allotments for corn have been declared because the law states they must be when probable prob-able corn supplies are high in relation to probable use. But many farm economists believe that our carry-over is hot large enough to cause much concern and that it would not take much of a natural nat-ural decrease In production to throw us into a corn shortage. In 1953 we raised more than 3 billion bushels of corn which, aided by a 764-milllon-bushel carry-over, gave us about 3.9 billion bil-lion bushels. The Department of Agriculture says our carry-over next October will be about 57S million bushels above "normal." This estimated "surplus" re-julted re-julted from a series of good yean from 1948 to 1953 and it's less than 8 per cent of all corn raised In that period. The 675-milllon-bushel ; "surplus" is not really a large reserve. It would last only a lit-(tle lit-(tle more than two months at our 'present rate of use. Experts say (that a bad year in the corn belt a year like 1936 would see us j run out of corn. i Even a short year crop like 1947 would leave us with less than a j 10 per cent, or normal, carry-: over. In 1947 the corn crop was 700 million bushels short of our normal use of 3 billion bushels. |