agricultural products, this improvement in demand may merely prevent 

 a decline which would otherwise take place, but it is more likely that 

 prices will rise further in response to this improvement in demand. 



Commodity prices : Wheat . Wheat prices declined slightly 

 Saturday but have since recovered all their decline and remain practi- 

 cally unchanged from a week ago, England purchased another 120 million 

 bushels of wheat from Canada during the past week, part of which may 

 be relayed to Russia. Secretary Wickard has re-emphasized the burden- 

 some character of wheat supplies in the United States and offered little 

 hope that sales of United States wheat to Russia would materially reduce 

 our surplus. ^ 



Corn . Corn prices have declined during the past two weeks. • 

 A mild recovery got under way Wednesday, partially in response to the 

 announcement of the loan rates on oDpn. In spite of the differential 

 in loan rates, it still seems that the loan offered Iowa corn farmers 

 is high relative to other parts of the corn belt. If that is the case, 

 it will have a tendency to prevent the increase in the production of 

 livestock in the western corn belt and may cause more corn to be placed 

 under loan than would otherwise have been the case. The average loan 

 rate for the State of Illinois is 75»6 cents; for Iowa, 73»1 cents; and 

 for Indiana, is 75*0 cents. 



Soybeans . Soybean prices have been influenced by the weather 

 to a considerable extent. The reports concerning damage are quite 

 conflicting. Considerable damage is reported in some sections of 

 Iowa, but locally there is very little damage. Farmers around here 

 have been inclined to harvest their corn first and let the beans stajid, 

 evidently feeling that the beans were in a condition to withstand more 

 wet weather thsin was the corn. The receipts of soybesms at central 

 markets have been relatively small for this time of year, and there has 



