Bright Hope

Behind locked doors and drawn shutters in a Department of Agriculture room one day last week, farm experts totted up figures. Outside stood armed guards. Promptly at 2:56 p.m., after six hours of work, the experts rose. Flanked by Secretary of Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson, and police, they marched down the hall to the waiting reporters and laid their reports face down on a table. On the stroke of 3, after U.S. commodity markets had closed for the day, the reporters turned over their copies and flashed the first official estimate of the size of this year's U.S. crops.

The big news was that another bumper billion-bushel wheat crop was in sight, the sixth in U.S. history. Winter wheat, which had suffered from drought in the planting season, had recovered under the heavy snow blanket. It was expected to total 860,521,000 bu. With spring wheat unofficially estimated at 272,000,000 bu., it looked as if the total U.S. wheat crop would be 1,132,521,000 bu. in the coming crop year. That was only 232,000,000 bu. less than last year's record harvest, and only a few million bu. below the 1946 wheat crop, which was the second-highest in history.

The bad news in the report was the shortage of feed grains held by farmers. The 849,198,000 bu. of corn on farms were 427,000,000 bu. lower than last year. Oats were down 23%. The day after the crop report came out, grain prices started up. May corn futures at Chicago rose to $2.29, a 10-c- gain over the week before. Despite the rosy outlook for wheat, the May futures edged up to $2.50.

Traders figured that, with feed in tight supply, grain prices would get no lower for a long time to come. Furthermore, with wheat prospects so bright, Clint Anderson decided to boost U.S. exports. He upped the wheat export goal by 16,000,000 bu., bringing the total for the year to 466,000,000. That was 66,000,000 bu. more than the limit which the Administration had thought last fall it could afford to send.

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