Can humanity be fed?

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NOTHING shocked the conscience

of mankind more during the great slump in the 1930s than the masses of food being destroy- ed while millions starved.

Are we on the point of seeing the same disgusting spectacle ence again?

Mountains of unsaleable wheat are accumulating in the United States, Camada and Australia.

The U.S. acreage under wheat, which was 78 million acres in 1953, is to be reduced to 58 mui- lion acres in 1955.

When the acreage is reduced, the income of the U.S. farmers will fall. They are being penal- ised because they have grown too much wheat.

Not only farmers but ‘business ‘men are alarmed, because the re- duction of farm incomes will nar- row the U.S. market for manu factured goods and extend the existing slump.

But what about the world food shortage? It is barely two month: since the British House of Lords raised the prospect of a hungrier and poorer world before the eyes of Britons. :

World population, the British people were told, was increasing ‘much faster than world food pro- ‘duction. 100,000 new mouths were being brought into the world every day.

In 1900 the world population was one billion; today about two and a half billion; and by the beginning of next century, five billion. *

Of the two and one-half billion people in the world today only about 650 million were said to ‘be adequately fed. The other one and three-quarter billion had not enough to feed on and their aver- age expectation of life was far below that of the favored part of the world.

In India, for example, the av- erage expectation of life is 27 years. In Britain it is 67 years

In England and Wales, 28 out of every thousand infants under cne year die each year; in Scot- land, 36; in India, 116; in Guate- mala, 75; in Honduras, 70; and in Nicaragua, 82 per thousand.

A world where the majority of people are not being properly fed is hard to square with a world threatened with increased unem-

By J. R. CAMPBELL

Canada is one of the great cattle-raising countries of the world.

ployment because farmers cannot sell their wheat.

The explanation is that in the capitalist countries production is for profit and not to satisfy the needs of the people.

The people of India, Africa, Central and South America could consume the apparently gigantic wheat surplus in the twinkling of an eye. They are too poor, how- ever, to buy it.

The average income per head of India and of Britain’s African colonies — averaging rich and poor—is below $110 per year. It is between $150 and $225 in Guatemala and between $110 and $150 in Honduras and Nicaragua. Imperialism has made these coun- tries poor.

For decades it stopped normal

Modern ‘Canadian combines are

industrial development in India, drove the artisans back to the already over-crowded land, pre- vented the accumulation of wealth and so hindered the mod- ernization of agriculture, while draining ‘huge profits from the country.

The imperialist countries wouid be repairing only a fraction of the damage which they have done to the poorer countries in the past if they combined to purchase a part of the surplus food and give it to them, without political strings, through the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.

We say “part” of the surplus advisedly, because in the surplus countries themselves, like the U.S. and Canada, there are still

many. people who would eat more food if they could afford to buy ate ; ;

The position is made abund- antly clear by the United States which is spending four and one- half billion dollars this year in so-called military aid and only one and one-half billion dollars in*economic and technical aid— the greater part of the economic aid, like the military, going to highly developed capitalist coun- tries.

Excluding expenditure in Ko- rea, the total amount spent by the U.S. in the Far East on eco- nomic and technical assistance

in the last six months of 1953

was $75 million.

Of this, $60 million was spent on Formosa. The rest was divid-

shown at work in a Saskatchewan wheat field.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 20, 1954 —

_ dence and equal rights-

ed between Indochina, the pines, Thailand, Burma @ conesia.

The “aid” granted by to colonies is only a mis tion of the profits extract them by the big imperial xed BY —and the “aid” is prove. the taxpayer, not by the

prital# frac a from

ns Surely it would be more ‘00 ible to stop draining PIO?” vid” the Colonies first. would be a genuine ; their resources and 20 luctant handing back of * ious! portion of the wealth Pre extracted from them. 1d3 The key to tackling the Wendt hunger is to grant colon’ ° pendence, and to stoP “|... py bery of undeveloped cou# polies the great imperialist mo? q eop!e®

This would enable the Pores themselves to raise thelr i nd by developing new indust™

by scientific agriculture.

The world has not at t ment too much food.

To feed all humanity 9°?"

is a’ vast task. : rf

When the colonies. 2% pet

the way to a new wort, ¢ coum

ed. The former imperiallS’ “nes

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J ot That is the only way out for all time the scandal 04, ing food surpluses alongs! necessary hunger.

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