Upset Basket

For months the Department of Agriculture had sent up a dire warning: this summer the U.S. would harvest the second biggest wheat crop in history but would have no place to store it. Taking its own warning to heart, the Government last week began floating twelve Liberty ships out of the Hudson River "mothball fleet" to provide "emergency" storage.

But the emergency had been adjusted elsewhere. As farmers out in the wheat belt already knew, the long-heralded "glut" of wheat simply had not materialized. The harvest was all but over in Texas, Oklahoma and the big Kansas "breadbasket," and it had turned out from 20% to 40% smaller than the Government's June estimates. Said one surprised Kansas farmer: "I've got the finest 40-bushel straw and the poorest 10-bushel wheat you ever saw." Reasons for the dwindling crop: long, unseasonal rains, in some cases hail, and plant diseases like stem rust and glume blotch.

Shriveled. In Texas, some wheat from the Panhandle weighed as low as 44 Ibs. to the bushel (v. a normal 60 lbs.)--"just shriveled-up stuff," not even eligible for Government loans, which require a weight of 51 Ibs.

In Kansas, farmers reported freakish results. Wheat had fizzled out where early prospects looked promising, had produced well in areas written off as no good. Yield ran from as low as 2 bushels an acre up to 40. The Kansas crop was almost a complete reversal of last year's "miracle wheat," where stunted, scraggly stems had borne unexpectedly huge heads, and the state's estimated 160-million-bushel harvest had turned into 231 million bushels. This year's 251-million-bushel estimate may turn out to be as much as 75 million bushels too high.

As for the whole U.S. crop, the Department of Agriculture, which estimated it at 1,336,976,000 bushels in June, this week revised it down to 1,188,690,000. One of Chicago's ace wheat forecasters, C. M. Galvin, trimmed his own previous estimates by 153 million bushels.

Caught Short. The poor harvest carried a few windfalls of good fortune. Last week, as feckless "shorts" ran to cover their bets in the grain markets, the price of wheat futures rose to the highest they had been in five months. At their peak of $2.06, December futures were 10-c- a bushel higher than a month ago. Millers and bakers, who had been taking their own good time about buying supplies, expecting to get bargain prices, decided to do their buying now--before prices got any higher.

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