People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — DEFICIT IN WHEAT. [ARTICLE]

DEFICIT IN WHEAT.

Half Way Between the Extremes Flares the Deficit at One Hundred and Fifty Million Bushels. While the price of wheat in Chicago is at its lowest point in thirty years and farmers are correspondingly depressed, it is interesting to note that the best authorities estimate that for the world at large there will be a big deficit in the wheat crop this year. The report of the department of agriculture for May renders it reasonably certain that the American wheat crop will be below the average of the years of 1880-90, or less than 450,000,000 bushels. This will be true even should the remainder of the season be so favorable as to insure a yield of spring wheat quite up to the average. The winter wheat has received irreparable injury and will afford a very meager harvest in the more important states. The New Y’ork Sun has printed an exhaustive review of the crop prospects of the world and the estimated demands for wheat,based upon the most reliable data, and concludes that existing conditions indicate that the following is the most optimistic view of the situation permissable: European requirements, 1,400,000,000; product of average European harvest, 1,230,000,000; possible American export, 136,000,000; possible Indian export. 40,000,000, total, 1,396,000,000 bushels. Deficit, 64,000,000 bushels. A pessimistic prognostication, based upon estimates of a minimum European srop or an American crop no greater than that of 1885, or 857,000,000 bushels would be this: European requirements, 1,400,000,000; minimum European harvest, 1,147,000,000; American exports, 40,000,000; Indian exports, 40,000,000; total. 1,237,000,®00 bushels. Pessimistic deficit, 258,000,000 bushels. Those inclined neither to optimism nor the opposite might find a safe position midway between these extremes. —Mystic (la.) Breeze. [Note the fact that India, for the year 1893-4, will be able to export 40,000,000 bushels. For the year 1890-91 India exported 56,500,000 bushels, and she exported 54,182,000 bushels in 189102. Cheap silver is performing wonders for India.]