9 



year, both because of large foreign needs and of continuing domestic 

 demands, will remain reasonably high and remunerative to producers. 

 When we come to consider the situation which will prevail a year 

 from now and what should be done in respect to further production, 

 particularly in planning planting operations for next spring, we 

 encounter more difficulty in making a forecast. There are too many 

 unknown factors. We must remember that European nations will 

 omit nothing to produce those things with reference to which they 

 can get a prompt response; that is, bread grains and feedstuffs. If 

 conditions settle down and order is restored, all pains will be taken 

 to systematize production and to have those countries become as 

 fully self-sustaining as possible. Again, in all probability, restrictions 

 on trade movement will gradually be removed and ocean as well as 

 land transportation will return to normal in due course. They will 

 doubtless improve in the near future. Foreign nations will more and 

 more look to their former distant sources of supply. We know that, 

 while the Argentine crop this year was not as good as it has been, 

 it was reasonably large. Argentina also had a surplus. The Aus- 

 tralian crop was satisfactory and there, too, were considerable surplus 

 stores. Algeria, I am told, has a 25,000,000-bushel exportable surplus of 

 wheat. We have witnessed in this country, as I have said, a record 

 fall planting of wheat and the sowing of a large area of rye. We do 

 not know how these crops will come through the winter. If the con- 

 dition should be favorable, we shall, of course, realize an unusual 

 harvest. We shall not have available until after the beginning of 

 the new year the estimates of live stock in this Nation. 



TOO EARLY TO SUGGEST SPRING PROGRAM. 



It is clearly, therefore, too early to make detailed suggestions for 

 the spring planting, and I know of no one who is wise enough to say 

 what the supply and demand will be and the prices which will prevail 

 a year from now. The Department of Agriculture and the agricul- 

 tural colleges and other organizations will continue to study the 

 situation, keep close track of developments and, at the proper time, 

 in advance of the next planting season, will be in a position to offer 

 suggestions. In the meantime, we must not fail to adopt every feasi- 

 ble means of relieving the farmers of economic burdens. We are taking 

 active steps to perfect the local organizations cooperating with the 

 Federal and State agencies, so that we may more effectively execute 

 any well considered plan that later may be devised. 



