Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-04-16

elgn-grown corn makes ours worlds
market, or. In plain English, allows the
Argentine corn grower to dictate the
price at which the American farmer shall
sell his corn.
Our experts of corn have been of small
volume. merely representing slight sur
plus above requirements, but 1t was a
trade that was valuable because it took
care of a surplus that If left at home
would depress prices of the whole vol
ume of production. AS late as 1900 this
outlet took 213, coo bushels that would
otherwise have had a depressing effect on
domestic prices. Argentine corn has
gradually taken this market entirely.
away from us, because their corn grow
ers can afford to, or at least are willing
to, sell their corn to Europe at a price
below anything We can meet. In 1900,
when we dominated the European market
with exports of s213, 100000 bushels, Ar
gentina had 100000 acres in corn and ex-
ported 100000 bushels. Last year, how
ever, we were able to ship only As, 100000
bushels out of a 800, 000-bushel crop.
while Argentina with ner acreage in
creased to 100000 acres, exported 1S2sO0O.-
600 bushels. In the past ten years Argen-
of the European market solely by the
willingness of the Argentine farmer 10
sell his corn at a price lower than the
American farmer can meet.
The removal of the duty on corn opens
our domestic market to this same com
petition, and the American farmer can
now only hold our own market by meet
ing at home this same competition which
/ -.
ket From the tail end of a relatively
small crop we have imported in less than
! three months since the duty was taken
off something like 100000 bushels of Ar
| gentine corn, an amount sufficient in ac-
tual and in sentimental effect to depress
| the price of all of our corn possibly 10
cents bushel. This importation of Ar
| gentine corn is only a beginning, sug
| gestion of what we may expect. The
area of the Argentine crop now matur
/ ing is nearly 100000 acres, and current
estimates indicate surplus for export
this year of fully $50, 10000 bushels.
! Argentine corn, May-June shipment,
! has been offered in New York at 64S cents
| cost freight and insurance, and at New
/ Orleans and Galveston about cent high
err The freight rate as far inland as
! Pittsburgh or Buffalo is about five cents.
To meet this Argentine corn at our sea-
board, the corn grower of say central
Iowa, will have to sell his corn at his
station for around 80 cents bushel or
less, or il can come inland some 400 miles
from our sea coast and compete there
with corn that is only netting IS cents to
growers in the central West.
In the past ten years the Argentine
farmer has displaced the American farm
err in the European corn market and now
that he has corn production which is
| increasing more rapidly than any posi-
| BILE European demand, we have present
ed him with the Atlantic and Gulf
states market, which has heretofore ab-
sorbed the Western corn surplus As II
costs less to ship corn from the River
Platte to New York than ii does to ship
from the Mississippi River to New York
it is evident that the Argentine farmers
now hold the whip hand in our Atlantic
and Gulf States market, and that here
after the price of American corn will be
determined by conditions in Argentina.
b w Snow in Orange Judd Farmer