i88 THE AGRICULTURAL CLUB. 



A closer study of the facts of the world's production and 

 consumption of the products which compete with theirs tends 

 to induce in producers a truer sense of proportion and per- 

 spective. It may be said that no amount of study will 

 enable anyone to predict with certainty the level of prices a 

 year hence. That is quite true. The weather still remains 

 the dominant factor in every country and with every crop. 

 But the movement of economic forces may, in some 

 degree, be calculated if all the indications are taken into 

 account and the probabilities carefully appraised. At 

 present farmers are apt to be misguided by partial and 

 spasmodic publication of isolated facts. Not long since, for 

 instance, the entry of Japan into the world's wheat market 

 as a buyer was widely quoted as evidence that prices would 

 rise permanently. Of course the beginning of a change from 

 rice to wheat as the staple cereal among the Japanese people 

 is a significant fact. But even in a nation so extraordinarily 

 adaptable as the Japanese, an alteration in the popular 

 dietary is a slow process. Up to the present the influence of 

 the new buyer has been negligible, and it will probably 

 be many years before the quantity required will be sufficient 

 to make any marked difference in the world's normal 

 requirements. By that time supply will have had time to 

 adjust itself to the increased demand, even if Japan herself 

 does not in due course provide a large part of the wheat she 

 requires in substitution for the rice it displaces. 



The admirable organisation of the International Agri- 

 cultural Institute is devised to provide the facts as to the 

 world's production and consumption, and it publishes a 

 large amount of useful information. It cannot be said, 

 however, to reach the British farmer, or to be available for 

 his use in a form which practically helps him in any large 

 degree in his business. 



