AGRICULTURE: While the Sun Shines

By last week, it looked as if the Government’s attempt to cut crop surpluses by voluntary acreage controls had flopped. The Department of Agriculture had asked U.S. farmers to cut their 1950 total plantings by 8½%. The Department’s preliminary estimates last week showed that farmers were planting their fifth largest acreage in 13 years. The 359 million acres were only 2.8% less than 1949. On top of that, Congress last week raised the acreage quotas for cotton and peanuts eligible for price support, despite the Department’s earlier cuts in this year’s quotas (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Barring bad weather, the greatest surplus will be in wheat.* Although acreage is being cut 14%, the cuts are being made in the poorest land. By planting wheat on their best land and using more fertilizer, farmers will harvest an estimated crop of 1,185,000,000 bushels, some 40 million more than last year’s bumper harvest. Much the same thing can happen in the corn fields. Corn farmers may plant only 82.7 million acres, their smallest sowing in 50 years. But sunny skies and hybrid seed can easily produce another bumper crop this year.

Despite the enormous surpluses on hand and the prospect of more acoming, corn and wheat futures edged up last week to new seasonal highs in the Chicago markets. And at Kansas City, No. 2 hard wheat stood at $2.32 a bushel, 12¢ above the support level. In short, the Commodity Credit Corp. has taken so much wheat off the markets by loans and purchases that it has, in effect, created an artificial shortage—and higher prices.

* As a partial cure for the wheat surplus, Kansas Merchant and Wheat Farmer Morris Coover last week offered a new recipe for bread, using 16% more wheat flour in every loaf and retailing for 10 more. Coover, backed by the Western Kansas Development Association, last week flew 500 loaves of his heavier, darker and more nutritious bread to Washington for sampling in the Senate & House restaurants.