Spuds, Spuds, Spuds

In U.S. stores, warehouses, barns and fields, potatoes were rotting by the thousands of tons--and the Government was paying for all of them.

Only the Government was to blame. In 1942, when the Allied larder began to run low, the Administration, backed by Congress, decided to encourage more food production by guaranteeing 90% of parity prices to growers of potatoes and other agricultural commodities. To make sure the offer would be taken, Congress extended the guarantee until two years after the "termination of hostilities."

The encouragement worked well. Potato production in 1943 reached an all-time high of 464,999,000 bushels, there was plenty for all. But last week the Government was reaping a bumper crop of wastage from the seed it had so generously sown. Perfect weather and DDT combined with the Government incentive to boost this year's crop to a near-record.

Mountains of Them. Most upset by this phenomenon was Secretary of Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson. At a "famine luncheon" for foreign relief in Washington last week he lamented: "There are mountains of [potatoes]. The Department has one man in a top executive job who can do nothing but buy them. We set a goal for 1946 of 378,000,000 bushels. It looks now as though the crop will be 445,000,000 bushels. How's that for a test of the ability of the Department to control production?"

Clint Anderson did not know how to dispose of all the surplus potatoes. The U.S. housewife does not want them, dehydrators can't use them, foreign countries won't eat them (they want grain),* and distillers are ordering less & less of them. "We'll give potatoes to anybody who will pay the freight" cried Anderson, "[but] not one bushel has been ordered."

Potatoes `a la Steamroller. Of some 25,000,000 bushels piled up so far, more than three-fourths were salvaged by distillers. At nominal cost Schenley bought 80% of southern California's 7,000,000-bushel surplus, hauled them to an old Army air field, dumped them on the runways, squashed them with rollers. The hot dry air absorbed most of the water out of them, cut the cost of freight to distilleries by thousands of dollars.

Such sales were the only bright spot in the Department's gloomy outlook. Although they were made at a Government loss of $11,700,000, they will bring in more than $100,000,000 in alcohol taxes, leaving a tidy Government profit of some $90,000,000. But even this was no bit of cheer for Anderson. "We will be criticized," he moaned, "at the next W.C.T.U. convention."

* The reasons:1) quarantine restrictions keep them out of most European countries, which grow a good many potatoes anyway; 2) in overseas shipping, handling costs and spoilage run high; 3) dehydrated potatoes cost about 25-c- a lb., as compared to 5-c- or 6-c- a Ib. for wheat.

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