Dangerous Race

Along the East Coast and in the Southwest, the U.S. was hot and dry last week. Rain came in dribbles, or not at all, and temperatures sizzled above 100DEG. In other parts of the country grain, vegetables and fruit grew fat and ripe. But there were not enough men, women & children to gather them in, store and process them. The U.S. food supply was running a dangerous race against: 1) drought, 2) manpower troubles.*

Rain Shortage. In Montgomery County, Md., one and a half inches of rain had fallen since June 18 (seven to eight inches would have been normal). Typical of troubled U.S. farmers who searched the sky for rain was Montgomery County's John Stiles. In a lifetime of farming, he could not remember a worse dry spell.

For the past six weeks Farmer Stiles has been rising an hour earlier than usual, just to poke around his parched 440 acres. Last week the pea vines were fading to white splotches on their poles. Tomatoes and beans were all that had been salvaged from the quarter-acre vegetable patch.

Grazing grass, as usual, was the heat's first victim. Down in the browned pasture, 40-odd cattle stood at the fence eying a distant field of ragweed, which looks green but makes no milk. This summer John Stiles, like many another drought-pinched U.S. farmer, is using up his next winter's cattle feed.

Studying his hillside corn, Farmer Stiles found that a yellow burn from the dry ground was creeping up the stalks. In his bottomland the stalks stood straighter and greener, but they were far too short for August corn.

The drought will probably cost John Stiles and his Maryland neighbors: 10 to 25% in milk, 37% in corn, 50% in late vegetables. In Virginia the potato crop was hit; in Delaware the dry spell took toll of tomatoes, limas, string beans, peaches. Total estimated crop damage in states bordering Washington, D.C.: $50 million.

Other drought damage:

>In Texas, the corn crop was already made. Cotton was not hurt very much by heat. But grain sorghums were in danger. Cattle were being fed on silage. Said the Dallas News: "Unless the drought and heat are broken within a week, the crop and livestock situation could become serious. . . ." The onetime dust bowl got a good rain. But June-filled water holes in trie Panhandle were drying up; feed and water for livestock were scarce.

>Oklahoma, thirstier for rain than it has been for seven years, frankly reported a "bad drought." Cotton opened prematurely. Corn was about 57% of normal. Peanuts were expected to be a total loss. Wheat was less than half of last year's production (29 million bu. v. 61 million bu.). Pastures and stock ponds dried up, made the feed shortage so acute that many cattlemen were sending their livestock to market ahead of schedule.

Labor Shortage. Outside Campbell Soup's Camden, N.J. plant more than 100 freight cars waited to be unloaded of their fat, red cargo. Some 800 trucks, carrying 3,200 tons of tomatoes, stretched down the road in a fourmile, bumper-to-bumper line. Estimated need of southern New Jersey canners: 3,300 able-bodied male workers.

A frantic call went out to the U.S. Army to send 1,000 soldiers from Fort Dix to help unload. Meanwhile, half a million bushels of tomatoes were in dan ger of rotting on truck, freight car and vine. A volunteer crew of more than 2,000 citizens and servicemen worked over the weekend, saved the waiting truckloads.

>Discouraged Oklahoma farmers, struck by floods last spring and drought this summer, were: 1) registering for jobs with the Oklahoma City U.S. Employment Service office at the rate of 35 a day, 2) packing their belongings in jalopies and heading for the West Coast. Some 1,000 Arkansas farmers, under a labor-exchange agreement, crowded special trains bound for the North Dakota wheat harvest.

>Queen Anne County, Md. reported that farmers had put up for sale 3,060 acres of farm land, 374 cows, assorted draft animals, equipment, farm implements. They were "quitting because they do not see their way ahead."

*OWI said that the present 11,000,000 U.S. farm workers must be increased by 750,000 before Oct. 1 to harvest fall crops.

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