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Show Farm Notes Wheat Prospects The Northern Hemisphere particularly the North American continent is the world's bright spot this year so far as wheat production is concerned. Canada expects to equal or exceed its 1946 crop of 420 million bushels. And the July 10 USDA report from U, S. wheat formers added smother 25 million bushels to bring the current estimate for this country's bin-busting 1947 crop to 1,435,551,000 bushels. In Europe, howeyor, this year's whea.t cryp may be as much as 10 per cent below last year's 1,3.50 million byshel hai 1 vest ' considerably under the 1 prewar average production of 1 1,670 million bushels. Flooding , in the Spanish Peninsula, poor spring weather in Germany, and. (severe drought in Balkan nations .will keep Europe's need for grain imports high throughout 1947' 48, Total production of wheat in both Asia and Africa is expected tg bo near the 1946 level, while winter damage has reduced prospects pros-pects for the Scandinavian countries. coun-tries. Winterkill, excessive spring rains, and floods have curtaieci spring acreage'and lowered, yield prospects in the United Kigdom. Reports from the Texas and Oklahpmji Panhandle and Kansas Kan-sas "indicate that 5,000 custom, combines are now operating in that area, of whcU 1,1 00 are from Canada. Kansas has 1,500 unfilled orders for combine se. vice, and Nebraska and qther States are beginning a ask "for help. Corn Prospects Brighten. ' The outlook for tht 1947 U. S. corn crop mr.y not be so bleak as recent spot surveys from Midwest Mid-west flood areas indicated. The Department of Agriculture's July crop report, based on July 1 estimates es-timates of farmers throughout the nation, showed that corn plantings finally reached 84,3 million acres, within 1.3 per cent of farmers' March planting inten tions. With normal growing weather, USDA estimates corn production will reach 3.6 billion bushels. This la nearly equal to the 1936-45 1936-45 average, although only four-fifths four-fifths of the 1946 record production. produc-tion. To be on the safe side with domestic corn supplies, USDA announced an-nounced last week the cancellation cancella-tion of July-August corn export allocations totalling 6,740 000 bushels.to be replaced by 6,333 -000 bushels of wheat, barley and grain sorghums. - Meat Supplies Consumers can look forward to as large a supply of meat this year as last when supplies were well above most war years, according ac-cording to the Bureau of Agricultural Agri-cultural Economics. Meat supplies per person in 1946 averaged 153 pounds, compared com-pared with 134 pounds in 1937-41. 1937-41. While .total meat output in the first quarter of 1947 was 'moderately less than a year earlier, ear-lier, greater production in the second quarter brought supplies for the 6 months to about the same level as 1946. I Meat production probably will be larger this summer than in 1946. If the cattle slaughter continues con-tinues unusually large, meat out-! out-! put may be almost as large this fall as a year earlier. Reduced (pork, lamb, and mutton production produc-tion was about offset by increased in-creased beef and veal production. ' Record or near-record consumer consum-er incomes in June created a strong -domestic demand for meat. Prices for meat animals in mid-June averaged 2 per cent below he March' record, but 4"7 per cent above a year earlier, when price ceilings were in effect. ef-fect. The prospective record slaughter slaugh-ter of cattle and calves for 1147 will result in a sharp reduction in numbers on farms. Cattle feeding in 1948 probably will be below the high rate of the current year. As a result, beef and veal output out-put is expected to be reduced in 1948. Tfce 1947 spring pig crop is slightly more than last year, and farmers' intentions indicate that the fall pig crop will be 6 percent per-cent above 1946. |