Feeding the Hungry World
WALLACE, BEHRY A.
Key to survival in war, our farm surplus could also give new life to underdeveloped nations Feeding the Hungry World By Henry A. Wallace IN 1938, as Secretary of Agriculture, I had the...
...Who will provide it...
...Obviously there should be very wide latitude given the management but general rules must be laid down in advance...
...How much capital should the International Ever-Normal Granary-have...
...End World Hunger by 1970...
...Unorganized workers sought and received it in the form of minimum wage legislation...
...Russia should definitely be given a chance to join the "UN End World Hunger Crusade...
...The Administration thinks it can reduce surpluses by lowering the price to the farmer...
...And now throughout the West surpluses build up, as production outruns demand and prices slip more and more...
...In short, the Government has subsidized with its own power the countervailing power of workers and farmers...
...As a matter of pure military security, therefore, a nation which builds up $100 billion of military surplus is surely justified in building up $10 billion of agricultural surplus...
...The surpluses are here to stay, and we must learn to live with them in a big and constructive way, taking into account our security needs and the mounting hatred of the hungry peoples of those who are better off than they...
...But not one of them copes adequately with the mounting ocean of surpluses caused by modern technology...
...We shall also be less likely to correct the considerable number of abuses which have been associated with government aid to countervailing power—abuses which have been especially numerous and serious in agricultural legislation...
...the only question is whether that march will satisfy his hunger and attract enough capital to bring him into the modern scheme of things...
...Many clear-cut analyses have been made of the farm problem...
...To the best of my knowledge, every modern nation in the free world has a system of putting countervailing power from the government at the disposal of the farmer...
...It was under his aegis, as Secretary of Agriculture in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Administration, that our present farm policies evolved...
...Ironically, the country has been saddled with overproduction and vast surpluses, yet hunger exists in many parts of the world amid all this plenty...
...If the government handles your great surpluses constructively, the market will give you a living price...
...This is the problem discussed here by Henry A. Wallace, a former Secretary of Commerce, Vice President and Presidential candidate...
...Agricultural technology ignores Iron Curtains...
...In other words, the proper storage of our agricultural surpluses will determine the outcome of the next war...
...In the crowded part of the world, population increases at the rate of 20 million a year, and agricultural output does not keep step...
...I say that, ideally, it is a United Nations job, a job for a revived and revised UNRRA...
...Probably there should be an International Ever-Normal Granary with an international plan for food distribution...
...For while the bargaining power of organized labor and the corporations grows stronger, the farmer has no bargaining power aside from that which the Government gives him...
...Canada and probably also Western Europe will steadily be less than the farm production...
...Key to survival in war, our farm surplus could also give new life to underdeveloped nations Feeding the Hungry World By Henry A. Wallace IN 1938, as Secretary of Agriculture, I had the satisfaction of seeing what I called the Ever-Normal Granary enacted into law...
...If we are convinced that our safety lies in this direction, we can slowly but surely work out the difficult details of putting together a program...
...If we fail to regard Government support to the bargaining power of the farmer and other groups as normal, we shall almost certainly neglect to search for the principles that should govern the subsidy of private groups by public power...
...I hate to use this kind of argument to justify vast surpluses because its pessimistic implications are so great, but the facts must be faced...
...Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has challenged the U.S...
...Farmers sought and received it in the form of federal price supports to their markets—a direct subsidy of marketing power...
...I do not criticise the present Administration for the way in which it has built up such enormous surpluses, provided it now gets busy on a comprehensive plan—national or international...
...Industrial output outrunning population can result in a higher standard of living, but the same percentage of agricultural increase brings disaster...
...Today, hunger is growing in one-third of the world, while in the U.S., Canada...
...If Russia refuses to join, there is no reason why the Western nations should not operate through some such UN agency as the Food and Agriculture Organization...
...At present...
...Let us respond by challenging Russia to join the West through the UN in putting agricultural surpluses to work to end world hunger...
...Many who have concerned themselves with these faults have continued to suppose that the remedy is to abolish the entire activity...
...Labor has sought and received it in the protection and assistance which the Wagner Act provided to union organizations...
...The problem remains essentially the same...
...Even if it could, its motives would be suspect...
...If Russia does what she plans, she will have a great surplus herself within 10 years...
...This provided for flexible loans ranging from 52 to 75 per cent of parity, depending on the size of the new crop plus the carryover...
...The very heart of U.S...
...Not only were there flexible prices but there was provision to cut down the acreage of crops in surplus...
...Many thousands of farmers may be ruined, but some one else takes over the land...
...amount storing surplus food in the right places...
...This is not the best frame of mind in which to seek improvement in what is certain to continue...
...The groups that sought the assistance of the Government in building countervailing power sought that power in order to use it against market authority to which they had previously been subordinate...
...Feed the hungry in such a way that they can learn to feed themselves...
...Therefore...
...But in spite of all that the Eisenhower Administration has done, in recent years the average farmer's income has gone down 10 to 15 per cent while the average worker's income has gone up 20 to 30 per cent...
...Our surplus corn and wheat is mostly stored in places where it would not be seriously contaminated even by atomic fallout...
...It must be said in defense of the Eisenhower Administration that it has used Public Law 480 to dispose of some $2 billion worth of farm products in exchange for foreign currencies...
...Is there a way by which the U.S...
...How cheaply should the International Ever-Normal Granary sell to the hungry nations...
...Australia and Western Europe surpluses grow even faster...
...Feed the hungry regardless of geography or politics...
...Outside of China, there are probably a billion people on small farms of low fertility where the population is increasing faster than agricultural output...
...Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, urging the proper storage of our grain, said: "A country where the masses are starving, as Russia, I think will be in a very difficult position to match us along this purely defensive line...
...can at once dispose of its surpluses and help feed a hungry world...
...However, the hungry nations on the receiving end should have veto power on the method of distribution...
...But if it has real faith in its agricultural planning, it will join the effort to show the power of its system to produce abundantly...
...Such persons are undermining our nation's security and balance...
...Even if Congress believes that it is too complicated to operate an International Ever-Normal Granary, with or without Russia in it, it is still possible to make our surpluses a blessing...
...No one person can spell out the exact procedure, but the objective is clear: feed the hungry wherever they are...
...I would rather, of course, use our food surpluses in foreign lands in a really big and imaginative way...
...This may be true in the case of specialties like eggs or potatoes, but it is not true of corn, wheat and cotton...
...agriculture is the combination of feed grains like corn on the one hand, and livestock and livestock products on the other...
...Undoubtedly, the U.S...
...It has also given away roughly a billion dollars worth...
...Our population increases at the rate of 1.7 per cent a year, but our agricultural output increases at the rate of 2.7 per cent a year...
...During the decade before I became Secretary of Agriculture, I stressed that the farmer must have the moral, legal and economic equivalent of what the tariff, corporate form of organization and other subsidies give to industry, and what the union gives to labor...
...I do not think we shall have an atomic war, but I do say that a nation which spends $40 billion a year on its military effort can well spend one-sixth of that In the last quarter-century, New Deal price support policies have transformed agriculture from an underprivileged to a stable sector of our economy...
...Modern agricultural technology has had such a great impact that, barring war or unusual weather for the next 20 years, food consumption in the U.S...
...The nations putting surpluses into the International Granary should have voting power somewhat proportionate to their contribution...
...the per capita national income is less than one-fifth that of the U.S., and grain production methods less than one-tenth as efficient, that extreme nationalism is rampant...
...From a narrow agricultural point of view I say to the farmer as I said repeatedly 35 years ago: "You must have equivalence of bargaining power...
...I felt then that any farm surpluses we build up would come in mighty handy in case of war...
...The trouble is that the farmer has increased his efficiency faster than the worker...
...Russia has little to contribute in the way of surpluses...
...The farmer today has less than half the income of the people in town, and there is every indication that his situation will grow worse...
...to peaceful economic competition...
...Galbraith went so far as to say that "the support of countervailing power has become in the last two decades perhaps the major peacetime function of the Federal Government...
...For a hydrogen-bomb attack would rapidly make pastures and growing crops exceedingly dangerous...
...But the U.S...
...Russia is not a member of FAO, nor is it a member of the International Bank...
...Russia and China, which have been woefully backward in their agricultural production methods, now also give signs of sudden and great changes...
...can do more to bridge the gap between the hungry and the surplus areas than any single nation...
...The common man is on the march in these countries...
...Let our battle cry be...
...This part of agriculture is headed for the most serious and continuing build-up of surpluses—at a time when wheat surpluses have reached almost unmanageable proportions...
...cannot do the job alone...
...He works harder and longer than the man in town, but his share of the consumer's dollar has been steadily cut...
...The most serious problem in the world today is how to start these people on the road to doubling their production...
...Fight those who urge that more farmers be driven off the land...
...It would be accused of having "political" pets...
...In October 1957 Dr...
...You must get it from government, as others have...
...We might be able within a few years to put ourselves in a position where the Russians can hit us badly but not so badly but that we can recover, and at the same time we shall be able to retaliate in such a way that they would not be able to recover...
...But if the hungry nations propose distribution plans which obviously lead to graft and waste, the surplus-producing nations should have the right to turn down such plans...
...The extensive storage of wheat, corn, grain sorghum, dried milk and dried egg surpluses then becomes vital for survival...
...In such case we must approach the problem in a far bigger way than we have hitherto...
...It is a big job...
...Meanwhile, for a period of ten years or so, they need food from outside—and the capital which food from outside can create—to enable them to look upward in hope instead of downward in despair...
...Economist John Kenneth Gal-braith of Harvard generalized and expanded this concept in a book he wrote in 1952, American Capitalism, formalizing the idea in its broader application under the title of "countervailing power...
...Today I feel trebly so...
...Indeed, it is precisely in this hungry part of the world where farms are small, schools are few...
...Like the executioners during the French Revolution, they have offered the guillotine as a cure for headache...
...The misery of these people can touch off World War III...
...Even a small agricultural surplus does enormous damage to the price structure...
...It is stopped only in those exceedingly crowded or exceedingly poverty-stricken lands where there is no capital for fertilizers, machinery, irrigation, improved seeds and more efficient livestock production...
...Without the farm-product loans and the operation of Public Law 480 to market stuff abroad, corn today probably would be down to 35 cents a bushel and wheat to 50 cents a bushel, with livestock products in proportion...
...In setting up the normal size of carryover, I insisted that we go far beyond what had been considered normal in the days of the so-called free market...
...The farmers grow fewer and the farms grow larger...
Vol. 42 • June 1959 • No. 26
