of the late 20s and 30s And so the technology 

 couldn't be applied. But look what happened in the 

 years 1940 and onward with the markets developing 

 from World War II. 



What happened to production? Taking the 17 most 

 important food, feed, and other crops, production 

 increased from 252 million metric tons in 1940 to 610 

 in 1980. This was done with only an increase of 3 

 percent in cultivated land area. 



Now, to my friends, the environmentalists, I would 

 like to call their attention to the fact that by use of this 

 improved technology, had we attempted to produce 

 that amount of food, feed and fiber with the technol- 

 ogy of pre- 1940, we would have required an addi- 

 tional land area equal to all of that east of the 

 Mississippi River except for the states of Illinois, Wis- 

 consin, and Michigan. Or, we would have had the 

 choice, of plowing up 70 percent of our range land or 

 chopping down 65 percent of our forest and wood- 

 land. Then what would have been the cost, in erosion 

 and in other destruction of the environment, including 

 habitat for wildlife and all of the other issues that are 

 played in large voices in lobbying groups of very spe- 

 cial interest groups'r' 



"Too many people here know that food 

 comes from the supermarket and they 

 haven't the vaguest idea 

 of how it got there ." 



So I think we have a great deal to be thankful for, 

 rather than to curse improved technology as too often 

 comes out at the present time 



Now, in order to have brought this tremendous 

 change about, it took an integrated approach with the 

 farmer as the integrater — the farm manager, the 

 farmer with dirt under his fingernails. The fingernails of 

 the farmer today may be pretty well polished, but they 

 weren't at that time. He was weaving together all of 

 these different pieces 



Research people had to make those different 

 pieces of the jigsaw. They had to learn about soil 

 science, how to restore soil fertility to the land, and in 

 some cases it never was fertile. It was deficient in 

 one or more nutrients. They had to develop agro- 

 nomic practices to conserve moisture, to find the right 

 dates and rates of seeding, the right crop rotations to 

 cut back on diseases and insects and then, through 

 plant breeding, to develop high-yielding varieties and 



animals that were productive in use and efficient in 

 use of feeds They were not only higher yielding and 

 more efficient, but had to fit the farmer's needs from 

 the standpoint of mechanization, to reduce risks so 

 that they fit crop cycles to escape frosts, tolerance to 

 winter kill, the quality had to fit industry's needs, and 

 the disease and insect pests had to be controlled 

 genetically or chemically Erosion had to be kept at 

 as low a level as was economically feasible. This 

 now is changing with more and more minimum tillage. 



This whole question of plant protection is important. 

 I think it is one of the areas where you governors 

 come into a lot of pressure because of those who feel 

 that we are being poisoned out of existence. I don't 

 think that is at all true. Look at the facts. We live a 

 longer, better, healthier life than ever before. Before 

 this could become reality, this tremendous jump in 

 production had to be hitched to economic policy that 

 was stimulated by government leaders, so that the 

 farmer could afford to adopt it and put it into practice, 

 which in turn resulted in the tremendous jump in pro- 

 duction That cut across many fronts. It had to do 

 with the availability of inputs, credit, and a fair price 

 for the product. 



I would like to mention here that the skill of the 

 farm manager is generally not recognized today in this 

 affluent nation of ours. Too many people here know 

 that food comes from the supermarket and they 

 haven't the vaguest idea of how it got there — the 

 capital investments that are involved in land and 

 machinery, the technology that backs it up, and the 

 management skills that are organized to bring all of 

 this together to produce that food that is taken for 

 granted 



I am a fancier of Jefferson's vision When I see 

 what is happening to our public attitudes towards food 

 and how it is taken for granted, I recall Jefferson's 

 comments in 1809 when he said, "Peace and secur- 

 ity: were they the drugs that evaded the eternal chal- 

 lenge in the minds of men in other nations'' And did 

 nations, like men, grow sluggish and apathetic when 

 they were well fed and bodily comfortable?" I think it 

 is still a very valid question today. 



Now, just to briefly try to illustrate what has hap- 

 pened, I will take two cases to show how difficult it is 

 to make change. 



One will be Latin America The problem of Latin 

 America was that it was colonized 100 years too 

 soon. Think about that a minute. What does it 

 mean? The feudalism that was then Spain's and Por- 

 tugal's was transplanted and superimposed and 

 shackled on the feudalism of the Aztec, Mayan, and 



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