The U.S. Wheat Farmer Gets A Good Price For A Bumper Crop

Life, August 2, 1937, Volume 3, Number 5, Page 15

All over the vast wheatlands of the U.S.--in a great swathe east and west of the Mississippi and in the foothills of the far Northwest--this ritual of harvest has been going on since mid-June and will continue till mid-September. At this moment the hayracks are rolling and the threshers clanking in the Dakotas. For three months the steam of gold that flows from such bundles will not stop. In a hundred thousand freight cars, in boats and trucks, it will cascade across the country--$1,000,000,000 worth of edible wealth. Not in ten years have U.S. farmers reaped such a crop at such a price--nearly 900,000,000 bushels at more than a dollar a bushel. Years of drought, blight and low markets are forgotten in Nature's 1937 burst of bounty. With the competing wheat basins of Canada, Europe and Asia thinned by drought, with the world's grain reserve diminished by two lean harvests, and with acreage yields of 14 bushels, the U.S. farmer will once more jingle money in his pocket.