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The Nation Has Changed Its Policy on Food Supplies 



Formerly the national policy on food supplies was to carry 

 stocks of grain in the warehouses, butter in the cold-storage 

 places, and meat in the refrigerators that would be adequate 

 to take care of day-to-day and month-to-month changes 

 in production and requirements. The farmer's ever normal 

 granary, livestock, was an important shock absorber in years 

 of large or small crops. When we had a surplus of food we 

 exported it, and when there was a deficit we imported. 



During the Hoover regime the Farm Board accumulated 

 huge stocks of wheat in an effort to halt the decline in prices. 

 One of the first acts of the present administration was to 

 attack the Farm Board and liquidate its stocks of wheat. A 

 little later the New Deal liquidated the stocks of pigs. Still 

 later it accepted the principles of the Farm Board and set up 

 the ever normal granary. Steel bins were substituted for the 

 farmers' ever normal granary, livestock. This was accom- 

 plished by a simple process. The farmer was loaned more 

 for his grain than it would bring in the open market. This 

 program retarded exports and retarded the normal feeding 

 of grain to livestock. 



With its "ever normal" granary the nation underwrote the 

 storage of grain as a solution to the problem of unstable crop 

 production. Until recently its books showed a net loss. It 

 was supposedly patterned after the experience of Joseph in 

 Egypt, who stored grain during the seven years of plenty 

 for use during the seven years of famine which followed. We 

 read, however, that Joseph had divine guidance. Whether 

 Joseph also had a blank check from Pharaoh and how, in a 

 warm climate, he succeeded in keeping the weevils out of 

 the wheat for seven years are details not recorded in Holy 

 Writ. 



Since Hoover's Farm Board did not stem the world col- 



