Locally, there is unlikely to be any change of note. Enormous shipments of mheat have been booked from Canada and the wheat section of the United States convenient for shipment over the [Pacific and it is possible that India also may send some here. This, however, is not for tha benefit of the foreign population. It should be common knowledge by now, for much has been written on the subject in recent years, how rapidly the flour-milling industry in China is growing, particularly in and around Shanghai. This, however, is said mainly to be due to the increasing conversion. of the native population, especially in the north, to wheat flour as an article of diet, the new mills and the ever expanding imports of flour, besides the greater production of wheat in the country, being more a com sequence of the native demand than anything else.
So our main hope must be that those who believe weather runs in eyeies are correct. The bumper crops in the United States are not, as some declare, the result of larger areas being sown with wheat because of a promise by the late President Harding that the Government would guarantee the farmers particularly remunerative prices. The American farming vote is so big that no one can despise it, and every successive administration says a lot of nice-sounding but not otherwise valuable things to the farmers, and the latter probably by now have gained sufficient experience to know this. Actually, we are in-informed, in no country has the area under wheat increased to any wonderful extent. The explanation simply is that the weather has been kind. Let it be as kind next year and the year after and neither wheat gamblers, shipping companies nor fluctuate ing exchange will keep the price THE FARMERS' ANXIETY, Tt will be of extreme interest then to sce what becomes of the farmer. He cannot expect to go on producing more than people need and receiving the same price for it. Yet meanwhile all his own costs of production, particularly labour, have risen greatly since pre-war days. Already American farmers are feeling anxious as also their Government wil] be.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.