OCR Text |
Show NATURE COMPLYING WITH CROP CURTAILMENT Main agricultural problem is surpluses. Solution was the crop-curtailment plan, whereby the government signs agreements with farmers stipulating how much of every kind of product they can produce. In return, the government govern-ment pays them for the land taken out of cultivation. Now a greater power than legislation has taken a hand and shown the nation what crop curtailment in the grand manner is. The power is nature. The crop is wheat. The middle west is literally a desert. There hasn't been so disastrous a spring in 40 years, and great agricultural states are dry as the Sahara. The drought is trimming almost al-most two million bushels of wheat a day from, the official May 1st crop estimate. The drought was accompanied by a dust storm that picked up billions of pounds of top-soil, with its planted grain, and carried it away, to fall along the Atlantic Seaboard Sea-board as well as the Middle western cities. Some of it fell on the dome of the capital at Washington. Some fell in Wall Street. Twelve million pounds fell in metropolitan Chicago four pounds for every man, woman and child in the city. Federal farm officials are considering allowing farmers to plant acres that were retired have advanced the date for signing wheat production control contracts. In many areas hit by drought it will be impossible to raise any crops at all this vear, and government benefit payments will be the only source of income the farmers will have. Even abundant rainfall could not save the crops, so great has been the damage. As a result, the agricultural administration has a new and grave problem on its hands how to carry stricken farmers far-mers through a barren year. |