OCR Text |
Show NO SHORTAGE OF FOODSTUFFS LIKELY. The department issued the following follow-ing statement on February 17. The 191-1 wheat crop of the United States was estimated to be 891,000,000 bushels. The estimated surplus carried car-ried over from the 1913 crop was a-bout a-bout 70,000,000 bushels. There was, therefore, a total available supply of 907,000,000 bushels. As the normal annual per capita consumption of wheat in the United States is about 5.3 bushels, 520,000,900 bushels should meet our normal domestic requir-ments requir-ments for food; in addition, 90,000,000 bushels are required annually for seeding. seed-ing. Six hundred and ten million bushels, therefore, should supply the normal domestic demand. This would leave a surplus of 357,000,000 bushels. Of this surplus, about 210,000,000 bushels were exported by January 30. This left 147,000,000 bushels, or 40,000,, 000 bushels more than our average annual an-nual export for the past five years, for export between February 1 and the appearance of the new crop, or for carrying over into the next crop year. The amount is sufficient to permit the export of nearly 1,000,000 bushels a day until July 1, before which time the new crop will be available. This is about the average recent exportation. exporta-tion. The large demand for wheat arises from the fact that there was an estimated esti-mated world's shortage of over 400,-000,000 400,-000,000 bushels outside of the United States, from the fact that the Russian exportable surplus of 100,000,000 bushels is not available generally, and from the fact that the belligerent nations na-tions are eager to secure food supplies. If it were not for these things, we should be discussing ways and means 0i disposing of our tremendous surplus of food products. As has been stated, the new American Ameri-can crop will begin to appear before July, The Argentine crop is now (Continued on last page.) |