SLACKER LAND AND FOOD FACTS 



BY CHARLES LATHROP PACK 



PRESIDENT NATIONAL WAR GARDEN COMMISSION 



PERHAPS nothing better emphasizes the need for 

 increased garden production this season in Amer- 

 ica than Lord Rhondda's appeal, early in 1918, 

 for 75,000.000 additional bushels of wheat. Already the 

 total exportable surplus of wheat had been shipped out 

 of the country ; yet the British food controller said that 

 unless America could send him 75,000,000 bushels more, 

 he could not be certain that the Al- 

 lies would have food sufficient to 

 enable them to continue the war. 

 Within less than a year of the time 

 we entered the war, it had come to 

 that unless we could export 75,- 

 000,000 bushels of wheat more than 

 we had for export, the nations 

 fighting for righteousness might 

 collapse through hunger. 



There can be no question that we 

 need all the food America can pos- 

 sibly produce ; for already, in ordei 

 to ship abroad enough to supply 

 our allies, we must go on short commons ourselves, as 

 we are doing on meatless and wheatless days. So great 

 is the total food shortage in the allied countries that all 

 we can produce will scarcely suffice to feed the allied 

 populations. 



In a more literal sense than ever before, America is the 

 "granary of the nations." No one of our allies was self- 

 supporting before the war, and each becomes less able 

 to produce food as the war goes on. Thousands of acres 

 of the best farm lands in France and Italy, and practic- 

 ally all of Belgium, are held by the enemy. Thousands 

 of other acres are war devastated and unfit for cultiva- 

 tion. And the areas that have not been touched by war 

 become steadily poorer through unskilled handling and 

 the shortage of fertilizers. Only America can produce 

 more food than it did before the war. And so the task 

 of keeping our allies in bread is particularly our own. 



In America food can be produced in two places : On 

 the farms by professional food raisers, and on our com- 

 munity lands by small gardeners. There are no other 

 sources of food. And the larger of these sources, the 

 400,000,000 acres of farm lands under cultivation, has 

 already probably reached its maximum production. 

 Close observers predict smaller farm crops in 1918 than 

 we had in 1917. The farmers themselves, in their mem- 

 orial to President Wilson last February, distinctly said 

 that they could not, under existing circumstances, pro- 

 duce as much as they did last year, much less exceed that 

 production. It is evident then that if we are to have 

 more food it must come from that other source and the 

 only other source the small gardens in our communities. 

 It is estimated that the response to the National War 

 Garden Commission's appeal for more gardens last year 

 > 



r ET us help liberty to sow 

 *- i the seeds of victory and do 

 our part to make "every garden 

 a munition plant." 



Shell out and raise shell beans 

 and potatoes and other vege- 

 tables, too on American soil in 

 Yankee trenches and help the 

 boys shell the Germans out of 

 the Hun trenches over there. 



resulted in the planting of 3,000,000 war gardens. But 

 excellent as this achievement is it is only a fraction of 

 what might be accomplished. Probably 10,000,000 

 American families live in the country or in our smaller 

 towns ; so that the great majority of those families could 

 have gardens if they desired. In fact, every one of these 

 families could have a garden if in addition to back yard 

 soil the vacant lands in the various 

 communities were put to work. 



The area of the vacant lots in 

 many cities and towns is surpris- 

 ing. There is probably no com- 

 munity in the United States that 

 does not have at least fifty acres 

 of unused "slacker" land within its 

 borders, much of which would pro- 

 duce fair crops of vegetables. And 

 the number of communities in 

 America is legion. 



And less generally understood 

 than this vast acreage is the po- 

 tential producing ability of the land. Compared to an 

 acre of land worked by the usual farming methods, the 

 possibilities of land intensively farmed are surprisingly 

 large. It is a good acre, indeed, that will yield forty dol- 

 lars worth of wheat, with wheat at $2.00 a bushel. Yet 

 $600 to $800 is a small yield for land of equal fertility 

 intensively cultivated and enriched. An acre of suitable 

 vacant community land, divided into twenty-five or thirty 

 plots, and well cultivated, will easily produce so much. 

 If our urban gardeners would develop the possibilities 

 of their back yards and vacant lots as thoroughly as the 

 commercial food raisers have developed the possibilities 

 of their acres, we should all eat and be filled. 



Upon the urban farmer, then, rests especially the task 

 of being his brothers' keeper his brothers in England, 

 in France, in Italy, and his little brothers in Belgium. 

 It was the last straw that broke the camel's back. It will 

 be the last pound of food that will make the scales dip 

 on the side of righteousness. And apparently the city 

 farmer must produce that last pound. 



Our vacant lots, then, loom large in importance as 

 large as the rejected corner stone. As truly as some- 

 thing good did come out of Nazareth, so salvation can 

 come out of them. But only if we put them to work. 

 Our great task, then, is to organize and mobolize these 

 "slacker" lands. 



To do that, we shall have to take account of stock, just 

 as we do in reorganizing any other business. We shall 

 have to know how many acres we have and what they 

 are capable of producing, and how many hands we have 

 to work them, and a dozen other things. And these ques- 

 tions can be answered only by a thorough survey. The 

 National War Garden Commission has issued a bulletin 



