Memorandum by the Ministry of Food on Supplies of Wheat and other cereals.

113 The experience of the past month has brought out clearly the danger of looking only at the total stock of wheat in the country, including the home crop, and disregarding the amount in the mills and the port granaries. The latter constitutes the effective working stock, because wheat on the farms is not readily usable and can only be threshed relatively slowly, especially in bad weather. Stocks of maize, barley and other cereals in the mills and port warehouses amount only to a few thousand tons and, as regards imported cereal feeding-stuffs, we are living entirely from hand to mouth.