THE WHEAT DILEMMA

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 42, 18 August 1933, Page 6

THE WHEAT DILEMMA

Wheat today is one more piece of evidence that storage in expectation of price-rise is an uncertain weapon. By storing, one refrains from glutting the market at the .lriqiment, but prices are still liable to remain lowbecause the market knows that stored supplies are hanging over it. This'can happen whether the article stored'is .wheat or butter. During the regime of Mr. Hoover and ;}he'Federal. Farm Board, United States wheat was stored in the interests of the United States farmer, and now the Australian wheat-grower complains that the United States Government, having depressed the market by its own storage policy, asks the other wheatexporting countries to correct the results of this American error by limiting their production and export of wheat.' "Why," it is asked, "should American wheat be lifted by other wheat crops out of the pit it digged for itself? Why should the Americans be-helped, by enforced wheat-grow-ing restrictions in other countries, to ■liquidate stocks they should never have stored?''. ..... ,The American answer is characteristic. -, In effect, It is this: "If you other ' wheat-exporting countries do not restrict output of wheat, our Government will dump our surplus (our Government compensating the growers thereof)* oversea, and will so upset your 'markets that-you will lose more; than if .you'agree to our terms for output-reduction."' The word dump is not ours. With charming frankness the United States Secretary of Agriculture (Mr. Henry Wallace), says that subsidised grain is "similar to dumping." So dumping is the big stick. No doubt it has driven Australia into the provisional agreement for 15 per cent, outputreduction reported in today's messages on the authority of the London "Daily Telegraph." But if America, Australia, and Argentina have agreed to a 15 per cent, reduction, it is probably conditional on consuming countries facilitating wheat consumption. That brings in the whole thorny issue of protecting the local wheatgrower in the 31 countries which, according to British Official Wireless, are summoned to a world wheat conference in London. But the consuming end provides a whole ;story in itself. !