The food problem

Front matter

Class.

Book.

Iga

Preface

Today the war has entered a phase in which food dominates the economics, strategy and statesmanship, not only of the countries at war but of neutrals as well. The Allies are blockading Germany, and its population is living in an era of food control hitherto undreamed of. The adjacent neutrals are under many restraints and pressures to yield their food to either side and are striving with every resource to protect their vital supplies. The Germans are trying to starve the Allies by sinking their supplies at sea. All are desperately trying to maintain production and reduce consumption. In consequence food problems in balancing vegetable and animal production, in imports, exports, and price controls, in protein, fat and carbohydrate content, are all silhouetted against a background of destruction and tragedy.

The American people as a nation and as individuals are face to face with a great special problem in connection with the whole war problem the solution of which they have undertaken in common with their Allies. A failure to solve this problem with its thousand complexities will certainly involve a

VI PREFACE

failure to solve the war problem in the only way we and the civilized world must have it solved.

From three years of contact with this problem of food some phases of it perhaps not too familiar to casual students of food regulation are very clear to me. These parts, or special features, are manifest from any examination, however casual, of the endeavours and experience of the countries engaged with the problem.

Any control of prices or distribution is the lesser of evils; a fight against something worse. And any form of control leads into economic reactions that are disconcerting. Another feature is the great role which what may be termed the psychology of food supply plays in the situation. However carefully national food supply may be adjusted, from the point of view of the physiology of nutrition and from that of nutritional economics, yet no mere sufficiency of the needed calories and balanced protein, fats and carbohydrate content in the ration will necessarily make it a satisfactory one. People of different kinds, with different traditions and habits of food use, must have, in some measure at least, the particular kinds of food they are used to. They eat more effectively, one may say, the kinds of food they like than the kinds they do not like. Taste and appetite must be consulted and satisfied in some degree.

PREFACE Vll

Another observation that experience, especially in Belgium, brings clearly to my mind is that famine does not occur according to popular ideas. In a country on a food supply below normal necessity all the people do not suffer in the same measure, nor die at the same time. The rich continue to live, despite any rigour in division; the poor get weak, and weaker, and die — of something else than famine. They die of tuberculosis; they die of epidemic disease; they die of whatever it is that finds fertile soil for its fatal growth among a people weakened by mal-nutrition or under-nutrition. The immediate factor in famine is the death rate, from whatever determining cause. This death rate is the measure of the intensity of weakening, and it does not necessarily depend exclusively upon the amount of food that is available.

Another impressive observation brought out by food difificulties is that of our intimate dependence on our domestic animals. We are likely to think first of the supply of cereals, and, indeed, it must be admitted that bread is the very basis of the food supply of a people. But we do not sufficiently realize the equally critical importance of maintenance of our domestic animals in a period of food shortage. We cannot even raise our own young without them. Nor if a nation is robbed of its animals can you keep the death rate of that nation down to normal

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by simple importation of animal products. Hence one of the greatest problems in a beleaguered nation is that of the preservation of its herds.

The reduction of the herds has future as well as immediate grave consequences. Europe today is cutting into its capital stock of food animals. That means that, though Europe may be able to increase at once its production of carbohydrate and can supply more animal food at the moment, its after-war problems in protein and fats will be doubled. This situation must have a great reaction upon our own agriculture. Europe will depend on America for years to come for a supply of animal products. The great present stimulation of wheat growing in the United States by guaranteeing minimum prices may yet have some of the characters of a national calamity. Indeed it may be questionable whether we should not in our own country, not only for our own sake but for the sake of supplying our hungry friends of Europe, encourage now the production of animals rather than restrict too largely our encouragement to the production of wheat. We are actually, at the present time, reducing our capital of live stock in proportion to our growth of population. It will be easier for us, just as it will for Europe, to recover lost wheat acreage than the lost herds. We shall find an era after the war when Europe will produce more food grains by virtue of the reduction

PREFACE IX

of demand for fodder grains — and we shall have less demand for export of food grains and a tremendous demand for animal products. It requires that we begin now to meet this readjustment bylaying the foundations for larger herds. One partial substitute for animals may be found by increasing the supply of vegetable fats, and in this lies much of the world's hopes.

All these are only a few phases of the great food problem before us. Professors Kellogg and Taylor have attempted in this book to set out the character and scope of the food problem as it now immediately concerns us, and to indicate the possible and most promising methods of its solution. The United States Food Administration, in close co-operation with all the people of our land, is making a gigantic effort along these lines.

Herbert Hoover.

Introduction

THE INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM

Food is always more or less of a problem in every phase of its production, handling and consumption. It is a problem with every farmer, every transporter and seller, every householder. It is a problem with every town, state and nation. And now, very conspicuously, it is a problem with three great groups of nations, namely, the Allies, the Central Empires and the Neutrals; in a word, it is a great international problem.

If food is a problem in the normal times of peace how much more seriously must it be one in the abnormal times of war; and, above all, of such a world war as the present. In this particular war time, indeed, it is acutely true that food is a great and pressing problem; one of enormous importance, its solution bearing heavily on the whole solution of the war. Only seven years ago M. Bloch, the great Russian banker, wrote : " That is the future of war — not fighting, but famine; not the slaying of men, but the bankruptcy of nations,

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Xll INTRODUCTION

and the breaking up of the whole social organization of the nations."

The future of war, as written about by M. Bloch seven years ago, is the present of war today. Not that fighting and the slaying of men are lessened. Only the Napoleonic and the Thirty Years' Wars approach today's war in the terrible losses of human life; and too great a drain on the human life of any one or several of the nations engaged may be the deciding factor in the war's conclusion. But on the whole, and as matters stand today, that part of M. Bloch's prophecy referring to the predominant influence of the food problem in modern war is thoroughly borne out by the facts. Despite the fearful and fatal struggling of an incredible number of men, consuming inconceivable quantities of munitions and using such amazing methods of fighting as were beyond even the fantastic imaginings of the romancers of a decade ago, the national and international phases of the food and general economic problem are the predominant features of the war situation today.

Now we of America are hurling ourselves into the thick of this struggle at exactly the time of both military, economic and food crisis. We are voluntarily taking up part, and, in truth, the greater part, of the burden of solving, if it be soluble — and it must be, and is — this tremendous problem of food

INTRODUCTION XUl

for the Allied world. The food problem of today of our nation, therefore, has as its most conspicuous phase an international character. What is the problem in detail? What are the general conditions of its solution? What are the immediate and particular conditions which especially concern us, and are within our power to afifect ? And, finally, what are we actually doing to meet our problem ?

These circumstances and queries just outlined are those that give special occasion for the writing and publication at this moment of this book.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

Introduction: The International Problem . . xi

Part I. The Problem And The Solution

chapter page

I The Food Situation of the Western Allies

and the United States ...... 3

II Food Administration ....... 19

III How England, France and Italy Are Con-

trolling AND Saving Food 38

IV Food Control in Germany, and Its Lessons 71

PART 11. THE TECHNOLOGY OF FOOD USE

V The Physiology of Nutrition 103

VI The Sociology of Nutrition 139

VII The Sociology of Nutrition (Continued) . 167

VIII Grain and Alcohol 197

Conclusion: Patriotism and Food • • « • • 210

PART I THE PROBLEM AND THE SOLUTION

Chapter I The Food Situation" Of The Western Allies And The United States

We have joined ourselves, in effect if not in signed compact, with the Allies in a tremendous war task. The men of most of these Allies, the men of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy and Belgium, are fighting ; they are not on the farms. But even in peace times these nations looked to us for help in making up the regular annual difference between their food production and their food needs; normally these six countries, taken together, produce but sixty per cent of the grains necessary for their bread. We have always been their greatest and most reliable granary, food store and meat shop. And now, with their production notably lessened, we are almost their only one. The grain of Russia cannot come out. The food of Bulgaria, Roumania and Serbia belongs to the Central Powers. Australia and India are much farther away than ever before, what with submarines and an available supply of ships so small that no ship must travel one sea-mile farther than absolutely necessary. And the European neutrals, caught between two threatening fires, must divide their little available surplus of meat and dairy products between Germany and England. Of cereals they have, of course, no surplus, but rather an aching void, and, therefore, they, too, must come to us with appeals for the satisfaction of their needs.

America then has the immediate and very great, but not impossible, task in the general division of war labours among the members of the Allied group, of playing a predominant part in insuring a sufficient and regular supply of food for the maintenance of the great field armies of our fighting Allies, and of their no less great armies of working men and women in the war industries, and finally, of their women and children at home. This maintenance of the food supplies of the Western Allies is an absolute necessity, second to no other, for the successful prosecution of the war. Men continuously hungry cannot fight or work; nor will men with starving families continue to fight if they can feed their families by stopping fighting.

Let us then examine a little in detail the food situation of the Allies and the United States, even going to that dangerous extreme, for a writer hoping to be read, of using a few figures. For if we limit ourselves simply to a generalized statement of the condition and need we cannot point out in any precise terms just what we must do, and how do it, to meet our duty in this matter as a nation and as individuals.

Bread has not infrequently been referred to as the staff of life. But it really is. We of the Relief Commission found it so in feeding Belgium. The loudest call of the people, their principal anxiety, and our first care, all converged on wheat. The German experience, as well as the Belgian one, has shown that a dietetic regimen for a semi-starving people is strong or weak, appeasing or dangerous, in proportion to the bread it contains. If the bread ration is normal, or sufficient, much repression or substitution can be used in the case of the other foods. Thus, considered either from the standpoint of physiology or psychology, seeing to the bread supply is the matter of first importance in the case of peoples living on short rations and getting occasional glimpses into the abyss of starvation.

The cereals, then, should have first consideration in the analysis of the Allied food situation. And all the cereals should be considered, not only those more strictly to be called bread-grains, but also those chiefly used as feed-grains for animals; first, because in a pinch such as the present one, a much larger use than usual of the feed-grains can be made for human consumption by mixing flour made from them with wheat flour for the bread, and, second, because on the availability of the feed-grains rests the production of meat, animal fats and dairy products which, with sugar, are the other staples of diet.

The annual pre-war production of the cereals, wheat, corn, oats, barley and rye, of the Western Allies (the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Italy) averaged, taking the three harvests immediately preceding the war as basis, about one and a half billion bushels annually. The annual consumption in the same period of these peoples amounted to nearly two and a quarter billions. But their production this year, because of lessened man-power available for the farms and consequent lessened acreage — in France the acreage is lessened by this and by the actual loss of land to the Germans by one-third — and lessened yield per acre — also partly because of absence of fertilizer — will fall short of the pre-war average by half a million bushels. In France, indeed, the wheat production this year is hardly more than one-half the normal.

The situation as regards the production of meat, animal fats and dairy products is an equally serious one. The herds of the Allies have been seriously cut into since the war began by the lessened production and import (because of shipping shortage) of feed grains and fodder for their support, and by the necessity of eating into the capital stock to meet the pressing demands for an increased ration of meat and animal fat of millions of men turned from light or sedentary work to the severe physical exertion of the army or the war factories. This reduction of the herds for these causes means a lessened reproduction of animals, with consequent increased lessening of the natural replacement of the herds themselves, creating thus the proverbial vicious circle.

The cattle, sheep and hogs of the Western Allies in 19 1 3 were over a hundred million head. At the beginning of this year they were estimated at about seventy-five million. If the decline in France continues through all this year at the rate followed since the beginning of the war, France will have but twenty-six million head at the end of the year, as compared with thirty-eight million before the war. She has lost i6}^ per cent of her cattle, 33 per cent of her sheep and 38 per cent of her swine since the war began. And yet she fights, and gloriously ! Is there any doubt that we shall help feed her ?

In 191 3 the Western Allies imported one and a half bilHon pounds of animal fat (in terms of fat content). In normal times the dairy fat supply to the Allies arose to a large extent from Russia, now cut off, and from Scandinavia, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland, the suppli-es from which are now going, under German pressure, largely to Germany.

Finally, as to sugar there is also a serious situation to face. Before the war the Western Allies were consuming annually about three million tons and producing considerably less than half of it. France, Italy and Belgium indeed produced a little more than they consumed, but England, with an annual consumption of two million tons produced no sugar at all. However, the large balance of production over consumption of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the smaller one of Russia, France, Italy, Belgium and Holland, sufficed to supplay a large part, seventy per cent to be specific, of England's needs. She found the rest in Java, Mauritius, the West Indies (excluding Cuba) and South America to the extent of i6% per cent; in Cuba and the United States, 8 per cent; and from other scattering sources 5^ per cent.

As a result of the war the European production of sugar has been greatly lessened. For this year, the total crop is estimated, on the basis of the acreage planted, at little more than four million tons. This is less than one-half the crop of 19 1 3-14. The effect of this decrease and of the war situation generally is to cut off almost entirely England's supply from Europe, for the other Allies, France, Belgium and Italy, from being a little more than self-supporting as to sugar, are reduced now to calling on the outside world for approximately two-thirds of their needs, so radically has their production been cut down.

So much for a swift examination of the actual present situation of our Western European Allies. They need help, and need it badly, and it can come only from us. What then is our own situation? In what position are we to meet the need ?

The United States is the greatest food-producing country in the world. We have a larger absolute acreage in crops than any other nation, except possibly China. This acreage (320,000,000 acres) is nearly equal to that of the peace-time acreage of all Europe, excluding Russia (354,150,000 acres). Our total annual production of cereals (bread and feed-grains together) averaged four billion and eight hundred million bushels (average of crops of 191 1, 19 1 2 and 1913), while the total peace-time average for all the European countries together, except Russia, is almost exactly the same.

Similarly, figures might be given to show our enormous production of meat and animal products : last year, for example, it was over twenty billions of pounds. But there is no especial significance in these comparisons beyond that of their indication of our interesting magnitude as a food-producing land.

What will be more to the point, and is really needed, is a comparison of our production with our consumption. However impressive the figures of our output, they do not so much interest the world outside, nor in particular do they carry any comfort to our Allies, if there is not indicated in them the fact that we produce more than we consume. We are a large nation, and a young, vigorous and growing one. Is our appetite and our need of food so great that we eat all we raise? And if we do not, do we leave uneaten enough to make up that deficiency between the imperative needs of our Allies and their production? In the precise answer to these questions we find our problem stated in exact terms. Hence we must again use a few figures.

Whatever our annual production has been, the important thing at the moment is the production of 191 7. Fortunately, the crops for this year are now so assured that figures can be given, with close accuracy, of the amount of each kind of cereal we may expect to harvest, or have already harvested this year. (The figures given are the government estimates of September.) Our wheat crop will be about 668,000,000 bushels; our corn crop about 3,248,000; our oats about 1,533,332,000; our barley 204,000,000 and our rye 56,000,000. Roughly, a total of five billion seven hundred million bushels of bread and feed grains. To the great advantage of ourselves and our Allies, this is a crop, taken as a total, materially larger than our annual average. The excess, however, is composed of feed-grains and not bread-grains. It is in particular our bumper crops of corn and oats this year that run up the total. Our wheat crop is, as a matter of fact, below the average, which is about 800,000,000 bushels.

Our average normal annual consumption of wheat has been 590,304,000; of corn, 2,653,698,000; of oats, 1,148,713,000; of barley, 178,829,000; and of rye, 35,866,000; a total of 4,607,410,000.

Thus, if we continue to consume our cereals as in pre-war time, we should have out of this year's crop a surplus of about eighty million bushels of wheat and one billion bushels of the other cereals taken together.

If we compare now the actual figures (obtained from official sources, and as nearly accurate as may be had) of the probable cereal production of the Western Allies for the year, together with those oftheir normal consumption, with the figures just quoted, we shall see clearly and exactly the situation.

The production of the Allies this year is closely estimated as follows : Wheat, 393,770,000 bushels; other cereals, 567,016,000 bushels. Their normal consumption is: wheat, 974,485,000; other cereals, 1.239,791,000.

That they may have a normal consumption until the next harvest, therefore, they must import in the next twelve months a total of about 580,000,000 bushels of wheat and 673,000,000 bushels of other cereals. Of this they can probably obtain from Canada (on basis of the Canadian crop estimates for this year, and the known Canadian normal consumption) about 120,000,000 bushels of wheat and 119,000,000 bushels of other cereals. This leaves them to obtain from us, if possible, about 460,- 000,000 bushels of wheat and 554,000,000 bushels of other cereals.

Comparing these figures of Allied needs from us with the figures of our probable export surplus on basis of normal consumption, we find ourselves face to face with an easy solution — as far as grain goes; grain ships are another matter — of the situation as regards the '' other cereals," of which we have more than enough to meet the necessity, but with what, at first glance, seems an impossible situation as regards wheat — for which read bread, with all of its significance as the very fundamental, the indispensable, basis of the daily ration. How are we — and our Allies — to meet this " impossible situation " ?

But the trouble is not with wheat alone. We have already pointed out in general terms the serious situation of the Allies as to the other staples, meat, fats, dairy products and sugar. We do not want to load this paper with figures and hence shall attempt no such detailed analysis of the situation as regards these staples, as that just undertaken of the cereals. But a few statements will lend some definiteness to the situation.

The cutting down of the meat production of the Allies and their limitation as to import from other sources than American ones, is revealed by the enormous growth of American meat exports, most of which have gone to the Western Allies, since the beginning of the war. Our annual average for the three years just before the war was 493,848,000 pounds; for the year ending June 30, 19 16, it was 1,339,193,000. These figures do not include pork products, the exports of which have gone up from a billion pounds a year before the war to a billion and a half pounds for the year ending June 30, 1916.

This demand for meat will not lessen as the war goes on; it will increase. And it will continue for some years after the war, because the reduction of the European herds cannot be made good in a day, nor in a year, after peace comes.

This growing scarcity for native animals and animal products among our Allies, and their dependence on us, is evidenced also by the export figures for dairy products. Our annual average export of butter for the three years before the war was four and a half million pounds, of cheese three and three-quarter millions, and of condensed milk about eighteen millions. For the year ending June 30, 19 1 7, it was: butter, nearly twenty-seven million pounds ; cheese sixty-six million ; and condensed milk, nearly two hundred and sixty million pounds ! Finally, another word as to sugar. We have seen that the war has greatly reduced the production of France, Italy and Belgium (England, of course, produces none) and has forced all the Allies away from most of their usual sources of supply and made them turn for help to the United States and to our own usual sources of import. For we have never produced in our own country and possessions (the Philippines, Hawaii and Porto Rico) much more than half the amount consumed by us. We have relied on Cuba to make up our deficiency. Our annual consumption is about four million tons, while the normal total production of the United States and its possessions, Cuba and the other West Indies, in pre-war times was about four and a half million tons. Fortunately there has been, since the beginning of the war, an increase in production in these countries, due to the spur of the increased European demand, of about a million tons. But from the present total the Allies need to draw at least a million and three-quarter tons; perhaps two millions this year. In other words, we and the Allies need to draw about six million tons from sources producing about five and a half millions; a problem in arithmetic — and eating !

We have outlined one phase, the international one, of the food problem. But there is another. It is the national, or domestic one. This ties up closely, of course, with the wider aspect of the problem. Indeed it is chiefly immediately caused by the attempt at provisioning the Allies, in the uncontrolled manner in which the attempt has been made from the beginning of the war up to now. The more nearly the Allies — and the European neutrals, with their underground pipes into Germany — have come to being fed from America, in the unregulated way so far in vogue, the more acute and larger has grown the domestic problem. It reveals itself most readily, perhaps, by a simple inspection of home prices for home products and a comparison of them as they stand today with them as they stood before the war.

Taking an average of the retail prices for the five years just before the war as a basis, the prices of various familiar foods on July 15, 19 17, showed the following increases: cornmeal 115 per cent; flour no per cent; potatoes no per cent; lard 81% per cent; bacon 70 per cent; pork chops 66 per cent; round steak 65 per cent; ham 64 per cent; sugar 53 per cent; sirloin steak 51 per cent; rib roast 47 per cent; hens 41 per cent; milk 27% per cent; butter 26^ per cent; eggs 24% per cent.

But the whole story is not told by such a simple comparison. The rate of increase has not been an even one. It was nearly a year after the war began before a permanent tendency for prices to rise asserted itself, and even then the advances for most commodities were rather small. Wheat and flour, and hence bread, however, were notable exceptions. But, by July, 191 6, the wholesale prices, as compared with those of 1914, show that almost all the most important commodities cost from fifty to one hundred per cent more than in 19 14. Since then the prices have continued to advance, and very notably in the successive months of this year. For example, the retail price of sirloin steak has advanced from 27.6 cents a pound on January 15, 19 1 7, to 32.8 cents on June 15 ; of bacon from 29.6 cents to 42.5 cents; of ham from 30.6 cents to 39.1 cents; of lard from 21.4 to 28 cents; flour (Ys bbl. bag) from $1,369 to $1,973 > cornmeal 4.0 to 5.5 cents; potatoes (peck) from 58.7 to 96.0 cents; sugar 8.0 to 9.3 cents.

The price of wheat per bushel was $1,071 on August I, 1916, and on August i, 1917, $2,289; corn advanced from 79.4 cents to $1,966; barley from 59.3 cents to $1,145 5 ^Y^ 83.4 cents to $1.781 ; potatoes from 95.4 cents to $1,708. That is, for each of these important commodities, with the single exception of white potatoes, the prices have more than doubled within the last year. Where are they going? When are they going to stop?

These terrible present prices of all commodities weigh heavily upon the consumers, especially on those who are on a monthly salary or a day wage; and these constitute the greater proportion of the population. It is true there have been advances in wages. In some cases, several successive advances. But these altogether seldom amount to more than twenty-five per cent, and therefore they are not at all in proportion to the increased cost of foodstuffs. These exaggerated prices have aroused general alarm and created wide-spread belief that serious trouble is likely to confront us in the coming winter unless relief is arranged for.