SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—M. 519 
wheat, and under some circumstances the value of silver is important. The 
depreciated exchange values of some currencies tend to minimise in some countries 
the ill effects of low prices, and may be delaying the reduction in supplies which 
normally would ensue. 
If the position of wheat could be regarded as separate and distinct from that of 
other cereals and .of commodities generally, it might be unnecessary to look beyond 
the influences of supply and demand, but, as matters stand, one is driven to take 
into account other considerations, including the quantity of gold or of credit based 
on gold, available for dealings in commodities. However, in the short time available, 
the author is obliged to confine his remarks to primary points affecting wheat. He 
gives a bird’s-eye view of the statistical position. First he glances at the total world’s 
acreage and production, but concentrates a mass of statistical data into a statement 
as to the exportable carry-over in the principal exporting countries at the end of each 
recent cereal year. He then takes each of these countries separately and in brief 
summaries indicates the position therein. This abstract is written in mid-July, and 
the paper will be read in late September. In the interval there may be great altera- 
tions in the statistical position, affecting actual and prospective supplies. 
The ‘ World’s Crop’ has increased in recent years from about 500,000,000 quarters 
to nearly 600,000,000 quarters per annum. The quantity of wheat and of flour 
stated as wheat entering into international commerce is about 110,000,000 quarters 
perannum. The exportable carry-over in the important exporting countries is likely 
to be, on August 1, between 40,000,000 and 50,000,000 quarters. The fact that very 
large quantities of wheat are in the hands of bodies who are not risking their own 
personal possessions in a venture and may be actuated by considerations other than 
commercial, is of itself the cause of great uncertainty in the minds of buyers, who 
apparently have reduced their holdings to small dimensions. If confidence could be 
re-established and stocks in users’ hands reconstituted, the unwieldiness of surpluses 
would be greatly minimised. 
The author examines alternative uses for wheat and in particular considers possi- 
bilities of increased consumption in countries using less than 43 bushels of wheat per 
head of the population. If time permits he proposes to give the relative values, 
reduced to a common denominator basis, in recent years of British, Canadian, 
Australian, U.S.A., Argentine and Russian wheats compared with the values of rice, 
maize and grinding barley in this country. 
At the present range of prices comparative costs of production hardly matter ; it 
is more a question of relative endurance on the part of producers, but the further 
question arises whether intensive mechanisation with diminished employment is 
preferable to the older methods of production with greater employment of labour. 
At present the cost of the wheat used forms substantially less than half of the price 
of bread, for the greater part of its cost represents either a practically constant or an 
increasing amount for dock charges, transport, milling, baking and the distribution 
of flour and bread, whatever the prices of bread may be. It follows that the return 
to the wheat-producing interests may be substantially improved without affecting 
materially the interests of the ultimate consumer of breadstufts. 
Sir Wittiam Hatpane.—The Meat Position and Outlook. 
Sir Dantrev Hatt, K.C.B., F.R.S.—PFarming Units. 
The size of the farming unit has always been measurable and to some extent 
determined by the ploughing unit, i.e., how much work in the year could be accom- 
plished by the mechanism in use at the time. In Domesday Book the land a man occu- 
pied is defined in teams of oxen; down to recent times the economic farms were 
multiples of the area appropriate to a team of two or three horses, plus the appropriate 
grassland acreage. The unit of arable cultivation was therefore not less than 50 acres, 
and the continued diminution in the number of small farms in the English arable area 
during the nineteenth century reflected the economic pressure on acreages maladjusted 
to the unit of cultivation. Nowadays we are in a period when horse is being replaced 
by mechanical power and a larger unit becomes necessary. The development of 
tractors and power implements, like the combined harvester, is still too incomplete 
to allow one to dogmatise about what should be the new unit of cultivation which 
will give the new implements their maximum economic employment. In this 
