The Mixed Blessing of Big Canadian Wheat Harvests (1941)

From the January 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

On November 19th two newspapers, the Manchester Guardian and the News Chronicle, both published some observations on the bumper harvest in Canada. The Guardian had a letter from Mr. Robert Tasker, M.P., who asked that “in the midst of our thanksgiving for the home harvest let us hold in grateful remembrance this year the bounty of the Empire crop. . . . All told, Canada will have about 730,000,000 bushels of wheat this season, as against 591,000,000 a year ago.”

In the News Chronicle Mr. Reuben Hogg was not quite so certain as Mr. Tasker. He wrote at length on the necessity of prompt and drastic steps to deal with this bounty. It will mean, he wrote, “that Canada has an exportable surplus equal to the entire world’s peace-time needs for about 14 months. But actually only about a quarter of Canada’s surplus is likely to be exported before her next harvest. A very large quantity will have to be carried forward . . . .”

Here enters problem number one, for the Canadian banks “are naturally hesitant to advance money for wheat that may never be marketed.” So the Canadian farmer will be the first to curse the superabundance of wheat.

Then there will be repercussions on British agriculture—”Farmers at home cannot see these surpluses accumulating with equanimity. Remembering the collapse in British agriculture that followed the last war, they are wondering more and more if things are not beginning to point to a repetition of that sad event.” Then there is the Argentine : —

 “The Argentine faces a similar problem with maize, for which a surplus of 25,500,000 quarters is anticipated next April. Unsold feeding stuffs are also piling up elsewhere, particularly in parts of the French Empire. It is said that Indo-China alone has a million tons of feeding stuffs held up and unsold.”

So although the bumper Canadian harvest may make it easier to supply the demand in Britain during the war, it looks as if Mr. Tasker’s thanksgiving for Nature’s bounty will not be shared by quite a number of people.

Capitalism is indeed a curious system of society.

Edgar Hardcastle