Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1917 — Bumper Crops No Boon to Farmer Who Gets Less Than When Yield Is Small [ARTICLE]

Bumper Crops No Boon to Farmer Who Gets Less Than When Yield Is Small

By WILLIAM J. SHOWALTER.

While is considering the high cost ol living from the standpoint of the city consumer, it might also consider the high cost of universal bumper crops to the farmers who produce them. A study of the statistics of the department of agriculture will show that bumper - crops, with al 1 the extra labor "they involve, bring-the farmers shorter- - pli —--y’- ——- - - For instance, in 1911 the world had a lean year so far as grain crops go. Leaving Out rice, the total grain yield was 13,78b.000,000 bushels—enough to load, a train five times-ground the earth at the equator. In 1912 there was a bumper cfop, the biggest yield of grain that Mother Earth, in all her history, ever produced. It reached the enormous total of 16,150,000,000 bushels, practically ten bushels for every man, woman and child upon the face of the globe —enough to load a string of cars wwi.ji-1. WfT. flwt) QiV -t 1 *'sl 1 Yli I*l - i 1 ~i '—~~ "—*"*' " i * TCaCfling liiOTC iiiall SiX ttlnvSTtrutmtt tuv uuntx.-And-yet, based on the f arm prices per bushel prevailing in the United States on December 1 of the two years, which is fairly representative of world prices, the farmer got more actual cash for his lean crop of 1911 than he got for his fat one of 1912. The average per-bushel price of the five great cereals was approximately 73 cents in 1911, as compared with 55 cents in 1912. So, if you will take out. your pencil and figure it up, you will find that the world’s farmers received approximately a billion and a quarter dollars less for the great bumper crop of 1912 than they got for the lean crop of 1911. ' The same conditions obtained in 1906 an<h 1907. Here the former year was one of those great fat ones .when the granaries of the world were overflowing, and the latter a very lean one. Yet the farmers got nearly two billion dollars less for their great bumper crop of 1906 they received for their lean crop of 1907. ’ All the world understands, of course, the law of supply and demand, and knows that big crops mean lower per-bushel prices. But to take both* worldwide, all-crop statistics and national singltjrcrop statistics and to find that without exception the bumper crops bring less' money in the aggregate to the farmer than the very lean ones is to disclose a condition in the economics of food production that is at once surprising and important.