Where Is the Wheat?

Last year the U.S. had harvested a record-smashing 1,123,000,000 bushels of wheat. Where had it gone?

Some of it had gone into an unprecedented national consumption. Some had gone abroad--194,000,000 bushels in the last half of 1945.

But the nub of the present U.S. problem was the fact that canny U.S. farmers often hold grain off the market when they figure that trouble or higher prices are brewing. By the best guesstimate of the grain trade, about 175,000,000 bushels of wheat were held on farms last week.

The farmer holds back for a variety of reasons, all economically sound from his point of view. When he saw last year's terrific increases in consumption, he began to think in terms of shortages and higher prices to ease the shortages. The higher prices are still forestalled by ceilings--but last week some Midwestern farmers were asking and getting such bonuses for a carload of grain as six pairs of nylon stockings, a heavy-duty truck tire or a fine bird dog.

Another problem was the Government's attempt to turn farming, needle-sensitive to prices and demand, into a planned economy. Under present ceilings, the farmer can make more money by feeding grain to hogs and cattle than by selling it. The Government-fixed premium price for fat hogs, introduced in 1944 to boost the yield of fats and oils for Europe, encourages the farmer to feed hogs to the bursting point.

What would bring out the grain? Government analysts and traders who know the farmer best believed that the quickest solution would be higher ceiling prices for grain and light-to medium-weight hogs. But the Government had pledged that there would be no such lifts at the expense of the U.S. public.

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