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Show -,V11EAT SURPLUS TALK MERELY A "BUGABOO" "The recent wheat conference in Chicago is a shining example of "too much surplus talk," says H. V. Snow in The Farm Journal for August. 'Deploring the low price of wheat and claiming u surplus of 170 million mil-lion bushels to be carried over to the now crop, this gathering convinced American consumers and foreign buyers that they were on 'easy street' so far as future wheat needs were concerned, and the perfectly logical result was a further price decline in this grain of some ten cents a bushel. "Of course there is a surplus stock to curry over. There is a surplus every year. A surplus of this kind is the reserve or insurance fund carried over this year is not excessive. exces-sive. It is les than it has frequently been in the past. It represents possibly pos-sibly three months' supply, and any less would be a dangerously slim margin' of safety. There is absolutely abso-lutely no justification for regarding such a carry-over as a reason for depresing prices, and it would hardly hard-ly have been so regarded but for the unfortunate advertising of it as though it were something abnormal and threatening. "I am unable to see anything in the wheat situation which justifies the present extreme pessimism so prevalent among producers, nor the price ideas that are entertained by buyers. "About the only definite figures that we have, by which to measure wheat supplies, are the monthly reports re-ports of stocks held in second hands throughout the world. On August 1, 1919, there were in second-hand stocks in the world 30G million bushels. bush-els. From that date each year, up to and including 1922, the second-hand stocks have been steadily shrinking, last year being only 121 million bushels, or less than pre-war holdings. hold-ings. In other words, the world for the past four years has consumed more wheat than it has produced, thus drawing each year upon the surplus accumulated as a war effort. "On January 1 of this year, world second-hand stocks were 301 million bushels, or (18 million more than the year before; but on June 1 these stocks were down to 207 million or only 17 million more than last year. "It appears, therefore, that during the first five months of this year we drew from accumulated stocks of the world 51 million bushels more than we did last year a rate whicl if maintained during the next twe months would give a smaller carryover carry-over this year than last. "A notion which is wrong to begin with naturally leads to the seeking of illusory remedies for the imaginary imagin-ary condition. Hysterical appeals to the American people to eat) more pork, eat more beef, eat more bread, morefruit, more milk, butter, eggs, in fact, more of everything, where any one is interested in production and dissatisfied with price, represent repre-sent a very hazy and rather childish idea of how people manage their eating. eat-ing. If literally carried out, instead of the lean lanky figure that typifies Uncle Sam, we would become a nation na-tion of big-waisted and heavy-jowled over-fed and inefficient units. "In the face of the facts it should be evident that wheat growers are unnecessarily depressed. Production and consumption the world over are very closely adjusted, and there is no occasion for dumping the present crop upon the market. In fact, the trouble is in marketing methods rather rath-er than in the quantities of grain for sale. If we ever get away from mass action under the lead of a hysteria that ignores facts, we will find that the wheat situation is fundamentally sound." |