Bounty

From deep in the heart of Texas up to the Platte River in Nebraska stretched huge carpets of deep, primaveral green. The plains and rolling hills of Kansas rippled in the wind.

Anybody who had seen the winter wheat knew a few weeks ago that this would be a fine crop--if all went well. There had been grave doubts, two months ago. Kansas, Oklahoma and the flat Texas Panhandle had had a long dry spell, even an ominous dust storm. But in mid-February Nature had relented, and over most of the great winter wheat belt had come gentle sizzle-sozzle rains. In most of Kansas and Oklahoma, the wheat was now high enough to hide a bounding jack rabbit.

One day last week in the big, grey Department of Agriculture building, armed guards brought locked boxes to a room whose occupants had been locked in for several hours. In the boxes were the summaries of tens of thousands of reports from the important wheat states. Adding machines clacked, then the good news was given: a whopping, record wheat crop was growing.

Ladybugs v. Greenbugs. Officially the crop was forecast at 830,636,000 bushels, better by 7,459,000 bushels than last year's bumper yield, higher by 5,000,000 bushels than the previous record crop of 1931. But Department of Agriculture men--not to speak of the always apprehensive farmers--had their fingers crossed. Drought, a heavy hailstorm, prolonged cold could seriously cut the crop. Mid-continent farmers who had escaped the blight of greenbugs that had ruined large acreages in Oklahoma and Texas now prayed for warm days that would bring out the brown-specked ladybugs to chase away the greenbugs.

Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson had more good news. He found more harvested wheat in farm bins than he had expected. The total, as of April 1, was 204,000,000 bushels. If farmers would now kick loose more of their binned wheat, the U.S. could safely figure on making good its promise to famine areas.

The wheat was there. The problem was to get it to Europe and Asia.

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