The Food Problem - 1917 Author:Vernon Lyman Kellogg Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FOOD PROBLEM CHAPTER I THE FOOD SITUATION OF THE WESTERN ALLIES AND THE UNITED STATES We have joined ourselves, in effect if not in signed compact, ... more »with the Allies in a tremendous war task. The men of most of these Allies, the men of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy and Belgium, are fighting; they are not on the farms. But even in peace times these nations looked to us for help in making up the regular annual difference between their food production and their food needs; normally these six countries, taken together, produce but sixty per cent of the grains necessary for their bread. We have always been their greatest and most reliable granary, food store and meat shop. And now, with their production notably lessened, we are almost their only one. The grain of Russia cannot come out. The food of Bulgaria, Roumania and Serbia belongs to the Central Powers. Australia and India are much farther away than ever before, what with submarines and an available supply of ships so small that no ship must travel one sea-mile farther than absolutely necessary. And the European neutrals, caught between two threatening fires, must divide their little available surplus of meat and dairy products between Germany and England. Of cereals they have, of course, no surplus, but rather an aching void, and, therefore, they, too, must come to us with appeals for the satisfaction of their needs. America then has the immediate and very great, but not impossible, task in the general division of war labours among the members of the Allied group, of playing a predominant part in insuring a sufficient and regular supply of food for the maintenance of the great field armies of our fighting Allies, and of their no less great armies of working men and women in the war industries, and fin...« less