7 AUGUST 1920, Page 25

The World's Wheat Problem. Will the Guarantee Help to Solve

it? By Captain R. T. Hinekes. (Hereford Times. 3d.)— Captain Hinekes discusses the prospects of the world's wheat supply and concludes that prices will not return to the pre-war standard. He infers that it will pay the British farmer to grow wheat, and that it will pay the nation to encourage him. He does not think much of State guarantees of minimum prices, and would prefer forward contracts or options to purchase on behalf of the State. The novel feature of the pamphlet is the insistence on the value of the small local mills, once so numerous and now as a rule standing idle. If the farmer could have his wheat ground at a local mill and fetch away the offals for feeding his stock, he would, the author contends, save much money now spent on railway carriage—for the wheat to a distant mill and for the offals from the mill—as well as on the offals which he has to buy back. This would indirectly encourage wheat-growing. Captain Hinckes suggests that the farmers' co-operative societies, which are doing good service, might set the small local mills working again.