XV 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 

 VERNON KELLOGG 



IN his great book on " The Future of War," first published 

 about thirty years ago, Jean Bloch, the Polish economist, 

 said epigrammatically : Famine, not fighting; that is the fu- 

 ture of war. 



With due allowance for the combination of half truth and 

 half exaggeration, characteristic of epigrams, this prophecy 

 of Bloch's of thirty years ago was fairly realized in the World 

 War. There was, to be sure, plenty of fighting in the war, 

 but famine and the threat of famine played a very important 

 part in its course and its decision. The food problem was al- 

 most dominatingly insistent among the war-problems which 

 all the major governments involved in the struggle had to 

 face. The great diversion of man-power from the fields to 

 the trenches and war-factories with the consequent lessening 

 of food production, and an actual needed increase in consump- 

 tion because of the transference of men and women from 

 sedentary occupations to vigorous physical and fuel-burning 

 activity, the transfer of horses and work-stock from the farms 

 to the cavalry and transport service of the armies, the cur- 

 tailed import of fertilizers, and the occasional actual destruc- 

 tion of food stocks during the military operations together with 

 the military occupation and devastation of considerable areas 

 of farm lands, all resulted in producing a food problem of 

 great difficulty of solution. It meant a calling on external food 

 supplies, and this at a time of unusual difficulties of transpor- 

 tation, to a degree never before dreamed of, and it meant a 



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