496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE CONSEKVATION OF THE FOOD SUPPLY 



By Dr. HENRY PRENTISS ARMSBY 



INSTITUTE OF ANIMAL NUTRITION OP THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE 



THE maintenance of the food supply is the basal problem of civili- 

 zation. Before commerce or manufactures or mining can be 

 carried on — before science or art or religion can flourish — man must 

 be fed. 



Hitherto, the people of the United States, thinly scattered over a 

 country of vast extent and seemingly exhaustless fertility, have scarcely 

 realized that there is such a thing as a food problem, but more and more 

 frequently of late there are heard warnings of the danger of an inade- 

 quate food supply for our future millions and of the resultant peril to 

 our democracy through the fostering of caste and class distinctions. 

 That the problem is a serious one, even if it be not so immediately 

 imminent as some would have us believe, admits of no reasonable doubt. 



Now the problem of food supply is in essence a problem of energy 

 supply. Food yields the energy which operates the bodily mechanism 

 and upon the regularity and sufficiency of this energy supply depends 

 absolutely all human endeavor. To produce those carriers of energy 

 which we call foods is the chief function of the farmer. By means of 

 the green leaves of his crops he entraps the energy of the sunlight and 

 stores it up in the starches, fats and proteins of his wheat, corn, etc., to 

 be liberated again in the body when these are used as food. The farmer 

 as a food producer is the first link in the chain of human activities — 

 the agent by whose labors the boundless stream of solar radiation is 

 utilized for man's service — and the density of population which a 

 country can support from its own resources is practically limited by the 

 amount of solar energy which the farmer can recover in food products. 



Clearly then in preparing to meet the future food problem the 

 primary thing is to see to it that the farmer is taught how by means of 

 tillage, fertilization, seed selection, crop rotation, and all the arts of 

 good farming to accumulate as much as possible of the solar energy in 

 his yearly crops. The proposition is sufficiently obvious and already 

 commands popular support. 



There is, however, another less evident aspect of the question. In 

 order to feed the teeming millions of the future, it will not only be 

 necessary to fix as much of the solar radiation as possible in the form 

 of crops, but also to utilize the energy which the latter contain with 

 the maximum of efficiency. When our population reaches half a bil- 

 lion, there will be little margin for waste. 



