WORLD WHEAT STOCKS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19666, 25 June 1938, Page 5

WORLD WHEAT STOCKS

INCREASE EXPECTED

PROSPECTS THIS YEAR

(British Official Wireless.)

Reed. 9 a.m. RUGBY, June 23. The Imperial Economic Committee s annual review of grain crops shows how rapidly conditions in the world market for wheat have changed in recent years.

The world’s visible stocks of wheat totalled over 32,000,000 tons at the end of the 1933-34 season. From then they had been so much diminished by -ugust, 1937, that the total, 14,250,000 tons, was the smallest figure for over 10 years.

Prices rose sharply during 1936-37 with the fall in supplies, and farmers throughout the world sowed an appreciably larger area with wheat lor the 1937-38 crop than in the previous season. Though there was no proportional increase in the world production of wheat, excluding Russia and China, nevertheless the harvest was larger than in any of the three preceding seasons.

Consequently stocks this August are expected to show an increase of some 2,000,000 tons over last year, much of this increase occurring in America, where the wheat crop in 1937 was bigger than any harvest since 1931.

Stocks in Canada and the Argentine are unlikely to differ much from the totals recorded in August, 1937, for in both countries the last crop was small as the result of drought and frost damage respectively. The review describes recent changes in the wheat trade of the principal countries. America, having bountiful supplies in the current 1937-38 season, has resumed its old position as a wheat exporter, whereas last year it was importing heavily. Russia mis increased its exports, while Austialia also has larger supplies available. On the other hand, both Canada a'nd Argentina have only small expoi table surpluses.

As to the future position, the review draws attention to the fact that in few parts of the world has there been any indication that the aica devoted to wheat for the 1938-39 crop will be substantially reduced as compared with the last sowings. Since last autumn the price of wheat h.s shown a downward trend, and recently the decline has been rapid due very largely to the prospect of a bumper harvest in America this yeai.

It is too early yet to judge what the final out-turn will be, hut it seems that the world crop, providing harvests are normal, may be substantially larger than the demand, even if the European demand is assisted by Government purchases to build up reserves of wheat against possible emergency needs.