Limited Supply

Secretary of Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson told the U.S. two blunt facts about its 1945 food supply. The facts: 1) the U.S. cannot "feed the world"; 2) what is more, unless there is better growing weather soon in the Midwest, the U.S. may have trouble feeding itself next year.

"Clint" Anderson's fact No. 1 has been apparent for some time. But fact No. 2 did not show up until last week, when the Department of Agriculture's July crop report was ready.

The July report indicated that the harvest of feed grains (corn, oats, grain sorghums) will be the smallest since 1941. The corn crop, feedbin for the livestock industry, was estimated at not quite 2.7 billion bushels--543 million bushels less than a year ago. For dairy farmers this may be made up, in part, by a near-record hay crop. Nevertheless, farmers look for a shortage of feed for their 715 million animals, fear next year's meat supply will be even less than it is now.

The prospect of a short crop may force Clint Anderson to postpone his plan to increase the meat supply by raising beef and pork subsidies, which would encourage the farmers to raise more cattle and hogs. He may also be forced to 1) ban the use of grains after Aug. 1 for the production of alcohol for beverages, 2) divert more wheat for animal feed.

The wheat crop is expected to be the largest ever. The wet, cold weather that delayed corn planting failed to harm the winter wheat which was planted last autumn. But despite a record crop (1.1billion bushels), for every bushel of wheat used to feed cattle at home there will be one less bushel available next winter to ship to hungry mouths in Europe.

Though Secretary Anderson can no longer count on increasing the supply of meat, he does hope for a better distribution of what is available. To help effect this, he: 1) abolished present quota restrictions on the number of animals that small packers (whose plants are not federally inspected) can slaughter; 2) gave them permission to ship interstate. This should mean more meat for big cities from the thousands of small U.S. packers.

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