As High As an Elephant's Eye*

Traders in corn, the prime feed for U.S. livestock, had expected a good crop--but nothing like the bumper yield forecast in the Department of Agriculture's first official estimate. Conditions as of July 1 indicated a 1948 corn harvest of 3,328,862,000 bushels, 39% over last year's dried-out crop and 2% more than 1946's record.

The Department also boosted the wheat harvest forecast 4% to 1,241,751,000 bushels, second biggest in history. Kansas City wheat men and railroaders scarcely needed to be told. One day last week 4,578 cars of wheat rolled in for unloading, 1,000 more than on the previous record day (in 1938).

Despite this news of plenty, grain markets held fairly firm. The Department of Agriculture, anxious to keep prices from sliding toward Government-support levels, had paved the way for its rosy estimates. Hinting that any increases in yields might well be absorbed by a broadening of the export program, it saw no reason for "radical downward adjustment in the prices of most crops."

Prospects of early price cuts in meat were also out. With an abundance of feed on hand, farmers this fall would hold back more than the expected number of animals for breeding and fattening, pushing the low rate of meat production still lower and prices still higher.

* . . .There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.

The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,

An' it looks like it's climbin' clear up to the sky.

U.S. copyright 1943 by Williamson Music, Inc.

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