AMERICAN WHEAT CRISIS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 26 March 1931, Page 9

AMERICAN WHEAT CRISIS

MANY CLOSE TO RUINATION SAVED BY FIRMING MARKET. (United Press Association —By Electric TelegraiJn Copyright.) Received 12 noon to-day. NEW YORK, Mardh 25. Addressing a joint meeting of the Farmers Co-operative Grain Dealers’ Association of Kansas and the Farmers Co-operative Commission Company to-day, the chairman (Mr Stone) said that the amount of wheat planted this year will shape to a large extent the .Farm Board’s policy for disposing of its 200,000,000 bushels and the stabilisation of purchases. Should plantings be smaller than usual the board is expected to make some sales, and if the opposite should prove true it may agree to hold its wheat for ail indefinite period, depending upon the resumption of the stabilisation operations of last fall. Mr Stone added that when wheat dropped about November 15 close to 70 cents in Chicago it was found that if the market had dropped another cent or two there would have been at least 40 to 50 million bushels held hv various parties upon which moneys were 1 Kir rowed from the banks, and which would have been dumped on an unwilling market. Tf this had been done it was the opinion of some of the best informed grain men in America that wheat would have gone .considerably below 50 cents a bushel in Chicago, which would have meant financial disaster. not only to farmers, hut it also would have meant the closing of hundreds of banks in the middle west. A message from Ottawa states that the Hon. R. B. Bennett. Secretary for External Affairs, has announced that 'Sir Joseph Stamp will sail for Canada next week to head a Royal Commission which the Dominion Government will appoint to investigate grain matters.