The Manipulation of Crop Prices
Farmers are warned that exporters are artificially suppressing wheat prices in the Inland Empire, but holdouts may see a payoff in the long run.
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Although the cotton crop is so short that many factories in Great Britain have been forced to close because of the lack of raw material, the price paid the Southern planter is not what it should be. A. P. Alexander, who has recently returned from a trip to the South, says the cotton buyers and exporters have succeeded in lowering the price of cotton on the plantation two or three cents a pound by systematically bearing the market. The same tactics have been employed by wheat exporters on the Pacific coast to bear the market. The crop of the Inland Empire was represented to be about twice as great as it actually is, and by representing that the grain market was glutted the price of wheat was forced down ten or twelve cents for several weeks. But it is again finding its proper level and the indications are that the Walla Walla valley farmers who refused to sell on a declining market will be money ahead in the long run.
“By representing that the grain market was glutted the price of wheat was forced down ten or twelve cents for several weeks.”
Commodity market manipulation remains a recurring theme for agricultural communities. The struggle between the individual producer and the large-scale exporter is as relevant to regional farmers today as it was in the early 20th century.
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