The Price of a Wheat-Only Future
A prominent grain miller warns that Washington farmers are flirting with ruin by ignoring oats and barley, leading to an expensive and unnecessary reliance on Eastern imports.
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While wheat farmers of the State of Washington are producing bumper crops in competition with other countries and finding markets glutted, they are overlooking a profitable opportunity to solve their problems, according to George Albers, a prominent grain miller. While the Pacific Northwest is the lowest market for wheat in the country, it is the highest in the world for oats and barley. Protective tariffs and government aids are not a permanent solution. Washington holds the world’s record for production of oats per acre, yet local mills are currently forced to import grain from California and the East, paying as much as $11.80 a ton in freight. Albers suggests that shifting acreage from wheat—a crop pushed heavily during the war—to oats and barley would stop this economic waste and restore the trade Washington once enjoyed with Hawaii and the Philippines.
“Doesn't it seem strange that right here on the Pacific Coast is the lowest market for wheat in the country and the highest market in the world for oats and barley and yet we are shipping thousands of tons in here?”
This 1924 critique of monoculture and supply chain fragility echoes contemporary debates about the sustainability of Washington’s agricultural economy. Albers' warning about 'economic waste' highlights how regional reliance on global trade routes versus local production remains a tension for modern farmers.
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