The Unthinkable Shortage

Wheat, of all things, is no longer a surplus commodity in the U.S. Last week Franklin Roosevelt underlined this fact by suspending wheat-import quotas to allow Canadian and Australian wheat to come into the country in quantity.

Statistically the U.S. is not yet short of wheat. But the estimated carry-over by next July will be only 550,000,000 bu., less than a year's supply even in normal times; less than half the expected needs for the 1943-44 season. Moreover, most of the carry-over is Government-owned, and Congress refuses to let it be sold below parity prices (over $1.40 a bu.). Since that is much too high to make it economical for cattle feed, and since the $1.05 ceiling on corn has kept that feed crop off the market, Eastern farmers, who grow only part of their own feed, have been pinched.

Western cattlemen, looking ahead for a year or so, fear a pinch sooner or later too. If they turn out to be right, the U.S. decision to upgrade the feeding habits of the world (from plain grain to grain converted to meat) will turn out to have been one of the costliest decisions of World War II.

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