Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1916 — FOOD FAMINE REMOTE [ARTICLE]

FOOD FAMINE REMOTE

WORLD’S RESOURCES ARE FAR IN ADVANCE OF POPULATION. United States Alone Could Increase Food Supply From One-Sixth to Two-Thirds. Forecasting a condition in the future in which there will be too many people in the world for the grain fields and stock ranges to feed, thequestion of a possible general shortage in humanity’s market basket supplies has received more than 100 years of voluminous consideration. Since the outbreak of the world war, probabilities of food shortages have been discussed more than ever before, but in respect to definite and narrow geographical limitations. Mr. William Joseph Showalter, in a careful study of the world’s food supply, considering the bulk production, its distribution, and the potentialities for increased production, discounts present-day fears of ultimate universal famine. Of the bugaboo theory that a general undersupply of foodstuffs is the menace of thb future, he has the following to say in a study prepared for the National Geographic society at Washington: “Many men are inclined to sound a pessimistic note as to the adequacy of the world's food supply for future generations, and, like Malthus a hundred years ago, are inclined to predict that the day has at last come when the human race must cease to expand its numbers, or else face inevitable hunger. “And when we consider how many mouths there are in this world to feed, and how much food it takes to satisfy them, little room is there to wonder at this pessimism. “The earth’s population today reaches a grand total of about 1,700,000,000 souls. If they were all set down at a banquet it would require sixteen tables reaching around the globe to seat them. For every ounce of food they ate, the dinner-giver would have to provide 53,000 tons of provisions, and if the dinner were no more than a democratic dollar-a-plate affair, it would cost, in the aggregate, as much as it costs to run the United States government a year and a half. “Expressed in terms of annual consumption, the world’s market basket is one that defies portrayal in weight and size. One is forced to cast around for new units of measurement to give a proper idea of its proportions. Assuming that the average Inhabitant of the earth uses two pounds- of provi-

sions a day, th© total for the year would amount to a billion and a quarter tons. It would require a string 1 of cars, carrying thirty tons to the car, and reaching eight times around the earth, to haul this material. “The fact, however, is that the average inhabitant of the earth probably uses more than two pounds of provisions a day. The steerage passengers on English ships are allowed 2 1.1 pounds each day. Even the prisoner in the average jail gets more than two pounds; the Russian conscript four pounds, and the Austrian common soldier pounds a day. “Still another way to get an idea of the size of the world’s food problem is to assume that the average individual consumes ten cents’ worth of food daily. On this basis it would require the entire national wealth of the United States, the richest nation of all history, to pay the world’s food bill for twenty-six months. For every cent per day per capita that the cost of living increases, more than $6,000,000,000 is added to the world’s annual market-basket expense. “But when one considers the possibilities of future food production, it is difficult td have much faith in the prophecies of pessimism of these twentieth century successors of Malthus. For instance, in the United! States we have 935,000,000 acres of arable land, 400,000,000 of which are under cultivation. Yet, with less than half of our available land utilized, the United States produces one-sixth of the world’s wheat, seven-ninths of its com, one-fourth of its oats, one-eighth of its cattle, one-third of its hogs, and one-twelfth of its sheep.

“Even with the land now under cultivation, if we produced as much wheat per acre as England and Germany, we could supply the world with two-thirds of its flour. If .we produced as much corn to the acre a* they do, we could double the world’* supply of that product. “Today the United States has * total cereal crop of 5,000,000,000 bushels. Were all of our arable land under cultivation and producing only according to our present standard* which is less than half as high a* that of western Europe, we could add enough cereals to take care of an additional population the size of that of Europe. “When one has lived on land, as the writer has don'e, which, at the end the Civil war, did not produce mon» than eight bushels of wheat« and 30 bushels of to the acre, and ha* seen this land produce as high as 46 bushels of wheat and a 100 bushel* corn, it is difficult to take any other than an optimistic view of the possibilities of American agriculture.’