Permanent Remedies

Robert D. Carey of Wyoming, Chairman of the President's Agricultural Conference, has summoned that body to assemble in Washington on Jan. 5. On the report and recommendations of that body depends largely the question of what Congress will do for agriculture at this session.

The first question that the Agricultural Conference is to take up is relief for the raisers of range cattle. After that will come consideration of cooperative marketing. One of the first acts of the Conference will be to consult with the presidents of the Farm Land Banks, who are to meet at the Capitol at about the same time.

Whereas wheat has risen about 50% in price during the past year, corn about 70%, oats about 40%, hogs about 40%, lambs about 25%; and whereas cotton, though lower in price is compensated by a larger crop, yet the prices for range cattle remain persistently low. Fattened cattle, from the cowbelt have risen some-what in price. But the raisers of range cattle have had no profit since 1921 and most of them are "broke." What they need, it is said, is liberal financing, on easy terms.

On the face of the matter, it seems rather ridiculous that the Conference should set to work now that the emergency has passed in almost all the branches of agriculture save one. Yet the program laid out by the President for the Conference calls for a permanent prevention of emergencies rather than the solution of one existing problem. Already Leland Stanford University, in a review of the last crop year, is crying warning to wheat farmers not to increase their production--that their profit this year is an accident dependent on an unusually good crop in this country and crop failure elsewhere in the world. This is indeed true. The world crop of wheat is 11% less than last year.

All this is very true and applies to next year and the year after. The Agricultural Conference must provide means of preventing depression from overproduction. But the attempt of the Conference in finding a permanent solution for the problems of overproduction may well become ridiculous within the course of a decade or two, for the reason that there will be no problems of overproduction. Even a bumper wheat crop, such as that of the present year, will no longer supply a surplus for export in 25 to 35 years at the present rate of population increase in this country Already per capita crop production is 5% less than in the five years before the War. Meantime, the need of Europe for imported grain will increase, unless her population growth comes to a standstill; while Canada Australia, Argentina and other grain producing countries, like the U. S. are gradually growing up to hav smaller and smaller export surpluses The effect of this cannot be immediate, but it is well within the range of vision; and as it comes about, the work of the present Conference will grow less and less important.