Yes, We Have No Tomatoes

Despite the record harvest, threats of food shortages keep popping up like hobgoblins at Halloween. New scarcities are now expected in such key items as canned goods and dairy products; even turkey will be in short supply for the holidays. More frustrating, because of snarls on overloaded U.S. railroads, the bumper yields will be tortuously slow in reaching markets, further tightening supplies and kicking up retail food prices, which have inflated 21.5% in the past year. Concedes Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers: "It's probable that we will see some larger food prices in the months ahead."

The cost of canned goods is all but certain to zoom. Canners started the processing season this summer with inventories at their lowest ebb in 20 years --vegetable items totaled 23 million cases, down from 50 million in 1970. With this year's vegetable-and fruit-canning season almost over, the National Canners Association reports that although there were supply increases, they fell below amounts considered minimal to meet demand. Peaches, apricots, apple products, tomatoes, peas and some varieties of corn will all be short and more expensive.

Swelling demand put the deepest dent in canned goods. Also, less produce than anticipated was grown this year as many farmers put in bigger plantings of extraordinarily profitable wheat and soybeans. A Teamsters strike against California canners last summer left mountains of tomatoes and other perishables rotting at loading stations.

Milk production is down 4% from last year, and starting next month a new round of price increases of up to 10-c- a gallon will go into effect in major cities. One reason for the shortage: astronomical feed costs have caused many dairymen to sell off their cows for hamburger. To hold down feed costs, some farmers are serving their cows ground newspaper and orange peels. On that diet, cows give a lot less milk. Butter production is down 18% below last year's and the Administration is considering opening the door to limited imports of foreign butter to increase supplies.

Bread prices will be squeezed even higher by the continuing pressure of U.S. and foreign demand on the American wheat crop. Wheat prices to bakers have doubled in a year, to about $12 a hundredweight, and there is no indication of any decline soon. Says John McCarthy, an executive of American Bakeries Co.: "We're now talking about an 8% to 9% price increase across the board." Raisin bread will all but disappear this year; heavy rains ruined the raisin grape crop as it was drying, driving up the price more than 50% to $700 per ton. At that price few bakers can afford them. A shortage of sesame seeds will denude the seeded hamburger bun. Because turkey has become a popular substitute for more expensive meat, flocks are smaller than they have been in any fourth quarter in the past decade. The result: the birds will retail at anywhere from 75-c- to $1.09 a pound, up sharply from last year.

Farmers, too, are plagued with shortages because production of farm machinery has fallen behind huge demand. Fertilizer is scarce because natural gas deposits have been badly depleted; the increasingly costly gas is used to manufacture ammonia, the source of virtually all nitrogen crop nutrients. Worldwide demand has also boomed the price of phosphates, used in other types of fertilizers. Last week the Government exempted fertilizer from price controls as an incentive to producers to increase perilously depleted stocks.

On top of all this, the railroads, in a reprise of last year's disastrous performance, will probably not be able to move this year's harvest from farms to markets with anything like the speed necessary. The lines are still straining to finish carrying last year's big foreign grain orders from farm-belt elevators to ports. The profit-starved railroads refuse to invest in huge fleets of covered hopper cars, and there is a chronic shortage of trains. To make optimum use of their cars, the lines are concentrating on serving the bigger grain elevators and leaving smaller, out-of-the-way elevators isolated. Their grain is thus as inaccessible to consumers as if it had been destroyed by blight--and the inflationary consequences are all too clear.

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