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Farmers Waste a Minimum of Food 



Apples, peaches, and cherries sometimes go unpicked and 

 rot on the ground. The consumer cannot understand why 

 the farmer lets so much good food go to waste. It goes to 

 waste because nobody wants it, nobody will buy it, and no 

 one will even pick it. Since such products cannot be fed to 

 farm animals, there is no way of disposing of them except to 

 let them rot. 



Much of this apparent waste is really insurance. Due to 

 the uncertainties of weather, the apple crop may be good 

 in one locality and poor in another, or good in all, or poor 

 in all. Fortunately, there are more apple trees than are nor- 

 mally needed. Therefore the shortage is not acute in the poor 

 crop years, and some apples rot in the good years. 



Farmers produce much more corn than human beings can 

 eat. This excess corn is not allowed to rot; it is fed to hogs 

 and other livestock. Since it takes about seven pounds of 

 grain to make a pound of meat, this is, in one sense, a waste 

 of food. In terms of such waste, the rotten tomatoes and 

 vegetables, the unpicked fruit, and the frozen cabbage pale 

 into insignificance. 



The hog is mighty good insurance. When there is an abun- 

 dance of corn, man eats what he wants and the hog eats 

 what is left. When the corn crop is short, man eats what he 

 wants, kills the surplus hogs, and keeps only sufficient num- 

 bers of hogs to eat the remaining corn. 



The consumer need not worry about the waste of food 

 on farms. The farmer will make certain that the minimum 

 amount of food goes to waste on his farm. 



Distributors Waste a Little to Save a Lot 



In the transportation of food there is some waste. Hogs 

 die in transit. Tomatoes are frozen in the winter and rot in 



