AGRICULTURE: The Democratic Feed Bag

Harry Hopkins’ report to the President on Churchill’s immediate wants can be summed up in two words: food and ships. His call for ships was no surprise. The call for food was not entirely surprising either. It had got semi-official recognition in February, at the annual National Farm Institute meeting in Des Moines. There Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard had warned that “the English may want some of our food and want it pretty soon.” Fortnight ago, food-for-Britain got its first official recognition when the President sent his Lend-Lease appropriation request to Congress: of the $7,000,000,000 first installment, some $500,000,000 is for foodstuffs. This is about twice the U. S.’s 1940 food exports. But for British stomachs, it is just a starter.

U. S. food markets have tried to read this as good news. In the last month, the price of wheat has risen 10%, of corn 8%, of hogs 4%. Even cotton rose in sympathy, making it nearly unanimous among U. S. staple, political crops. But last week these crops slipped back from their recent highs. For they are not the crops Britain is most interested in.

Britons’ hunger is conditioned by two thing.: 1) the scarcity of refrigerator cargo space, 2) the constant bombing of gas mains, which puts a premium on food that does not have to be cooked. They also want the maximum of food in the minimum of space. This means they want as much of their meat as possible in tins, which is not the way the U. S. is accustomed to packing it. The Argentine tins meat, but can supply the British only to the extent that the U. S. can send her tin plate (which she normally gets from Britain). Meanwhile U. S. cattlemen will not feel the new British demand until U. S. packers can get tinning capacity.

One U. S. staple the British do need is lard. Thanks to talk of heavy Japanese and Russian buying (possibly for transshipment to Germany), the U. S. lard market has been strong lately. Last week it was stronger: Chicago lard rose 9% in four days after the Surplus Marketing Administration bought 11,742,000 lb., presumably for Britain.

The British may take some canned corn. But the likeliest boost to U. S. corn farmers will come indirectly, as demand for pork products increases. By increased feeding, it would be easy for U. S. hog raisers to add at least 10 lb. to each hog. Thus the huge corn surplus would be lightened, and the lard supply increased without increasing the number of hogs.

The British are interested in processed and packaged foods of all sorts. That means especially condensed or powdered milk, cheese, dried and frozen eggs (the egg futures market, in anticipation, touched a 1941 high last week), and canned and dried fruits and vegetables. Last fortnight the British bought 60,000 cases of Southern standard canned tomatoes, last week the first canned grapefruit juice (36,000 crates) was shipped, and there were inquiries for surplus prunes and raisins.

British food experts are already invading Washington with suggestions on how to get the most nutrition into the least space. Chief recipient of these suggestions is the Department of Agriculture’s Surplus Marketing Administration. Originally a mere pail to catch U. S. surpluses and distribute them (via stamp plans, etc.) to reliefers, SMA has now become an agency whose client, though a reliefer, is so important to the U. S. that it may change the whole character of U. S. farming.

The Great Plains were plowed and sown to wheat to feed Europe in World War I, and their surpluses have made political trouble almost ever since. To feed Britain this time, the Department of Agriculture has a tougher but more constructive job. As tactfully as it can, it must discourage U. S. farmers from raising such inevitable surplus crops as wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton. It must encourage dairy, fruit and vegetable crops, which have always been side shows for U. S. agriculture. But not only do the British need these crops, the U. S. also needs more of them.

From the nutritional standpoint, dairy, fruit and vegetable products have long been a signal deficiency in the U. S. national diet. The next phase of defense is almost certain to see Nutrition emerge as a national slogan. To Agriculture officials, the task of feeding the democracies interlocks nicely with their own long-term aims: move the farmers out of surplus export crops, and give the U. S. better-balanced rations.