Farm Bill Promotes Growing Food In Abundance to Feed World's Hungry, 1947

“Economy of Abundance” from the Editorial Page in the Saturday, May 10, 1947, issue of the Statesville Record Landmark

Secretary of Agriculture Anderson has proposed a realistic farm program to succeed the wartime price-support setup. It is based on the theory that food should be grown in abundance and consumed the same way.

This is quite a departure from the present practice of maintaining artificial high prices and dumping surpluses as well as from the prewar economy of scarcity, which paid farmers for lowering the food supply to match lowered buying power.

Mr. Anderson would put a floor under consumption and make “some sort of food allotment program available at all times.” With such a flexible setup, neither a temporary slump nor a depression would have to mean lack of food for the poorly paid or unemployed. Farmers could raise food in the knowledge that it would be eaten. Instead of paying the farmer for not producing, the government would buy food for those who couldn’t afford it.

In addition, the secretary would like to see this government enter into agreements with other countries for the sale of our food surpluses at reduced prices. It seems likely that when Mr. Anderson’s former congressional colleagues will give his plan consideration when they start writing a new farm bill.

There will be no scarcity of hungry people in this world for some time to come. In view of that unhappy prospect, any thought of an agricultural economy of scarcity would seem not only unreal, but rather heartless.

A government-planned food program costs money, whether the money is spent to plow under little pigs, support food prices, or make food available free or at reduced cost to those who need it. But the last type of expenditure promises the most dividends.

We may hope that America will never again see the bad times when, in Mr. Roosevelt’s words, one-third of a nation was ill-fed. We may work to see that those times don’t return. But, though economic emergencies may be minimized, there is no guarantee that they can be avoided entirely.

Even if we succeed in keeping our living standard at its present level, there will be a place for our surplus food in other lands. And food today is an important factor in American diplomacy.

Food is a key chapter in the story of America’s world position today. A well-fed, prosperous America sharing food with others will do much to sell doubtful peoples on the American brand of democracy. There’s considerable more nourishment for a hungry European in a loaf of bread made from American flour than in a pound of anti-American propaganda leaflets.