The Hundred Year Diet by Susan Yager

Author:Susan Yager
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781605290119
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2010-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

FOOD FIGHTS

By 1973, Americans had grown accustomed to the low cost and abundance of food—which posed a problem for President Richard Nixon. Americans were spending 15.7 percent of their disposable income on food, less than they ever had before, and less than any other industrialized country. In the same year, Germans spent 22.5 percent of their household income on food, Italians spent 31.9 percent, and the Japanese spent 33.2 percent. But US food prices were predicted to soar. On January 3, the Wall Street Journal ran the front-page headline “FATTER FOOD BILLS,” warning that a poor fall harvest coupled with increased demand had escalated corn and soybean prices. These were the two main dietary components of the nation’s livestock—cows and chickens alike were being fed corn and soybean meal. Since livestock feed accounted for as much as 80 percent of the cost of beef, chicken, and eggs, higher corn and soy prices would translate into higher grocery bills for American families. The price of milk had already increased by as much as 5 cents per gallon, and over the previous 3 months, the cost of eggs had jumped by 20 cents per dozen. An enraged middle class voiced its discontent; housewives organized boycotts and protests, prompting Time magazine to label the movement Housewives’ Lib. Although some people still remembered World War II rationing and had even lived through the dire circumstances of the Great Depression, for much of the middle class a food shortage or increased food prices was incomprehensible. Agricultural economist Lester R. Brown, head of the Overseas Development Council (and founder of the Worldwatch Institute in 1974), warned that there was a risk of empty meat counters in the months ahead and rationing would be likely. “Americans are sharing food scarcity with Russia,” he stated in a 1973 Newsweek interview.

The price of sugar was actually going down, but the USDA reacted to demands from the sugar lobby and reduced import quotas for the second time in months—seemingly stabilizing sugar as a commodity. In reality the price would have declined much further if less expensive imports weren’t kept out of the American market. The price of everything else—meat, poultry, eggs, fruits, and vegetables—was soaring. The New York Times published a question-and-answer session with government, industry, and consumer authorities in an attempt to determine how this could have happened to the best-fed country on Earth and what could be done about it. The leaders criticized Nixon for paying farmers to let some of their fields lay fallow, which now seemed absurd with all of the current shortages. This policy of payment for not planting more crops had been enacted about a year earlier, when Nixon was attempting to win the farm vote and further secure his landslide 1972 reelection. Known as the “set-aside” program, it was a subsidy designed to increase the price of basic commodities by keeping land out of production, and it worked—in 1 year US food production dropped more than 2 percent while subsidies to farmers increased by $1 billion.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.