Harvests of Hope

Americans, watching the spectacle of chronic agricultural overproduction at home, find it hard to believe predictions of a future in which famine stalks a world too populous for the planet to feed. On the contrary, there is evidence that the future may not be so dire. This year's worldwide harvest is the greatest in history for the second straight year. And there are hopeful glimmers from the Rockefeller Foundation's experts that the world is making great strides toward feeding itself.

Mexico in 25 years has gone from importing food to becoming self-sufficient. Indeed, new breeds of Mexican wheat have gone to Turkey for the production of a huge new crop, to India, whose wheat harvest will leap 25% this year, and to Pakistan. If the winter rains are right, Pakistan will become self-sufficient in wheat next April for the first time. A new U.S. Department of Agriculture "doublecross" hybrid has made Kenya self-sufficient in corn. In Southeast Asia, the newly developed IR8 rice strain has been tested in Thailand, South Viet Nam, Indonesia, Burma and the Philippines and in some cases increased the annual yield twentyfold. The world's food experts are taking heart, though the sense of urgency remains.

The U.S. continues to feel this urgency deeply because it has been the world's granary under the Food for Peace (now Food for Freedom) law, which since 1954 has exported $15 billion worth of food. Envisioned as a hybrid of humanitarianism, diplomacy and hard-nosed dumping of surplus crops, the overseas program by 1971 will require payments in dollars rather than soft currencies, and ostensibly will make nations push their own food supply. Meanwhile, laboratories continue to cultivate new ideas. The latest range from weeding row crops with flame throwers and laying asphalt hardpans for instant upland rice paddies all the way to the science-fiction realm. One scheme being seriously examined in pilot plants involves making protein food from oil.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.