FOOD: The Farmers Come Through

One of the most heartening U.S. communiqués of the war came out last week. It came not from the Army or Navy but from the Agriculture Department's Crop Reporting Board. CRB's latest report—on 1942 farm planting—was, as usual, statistics-crammed, unreadable. But in the light of Secretary Claude Wickard's maxim: "Food will win the war and write the peace" (TIME, July 21), CRB's communiqué showed that the U.S. had won the first big engagement in the Battle of the Soil.

When Secretary Wickard boosted and re-boosted food-production goals last fall, he had only hope. The report showed that U.S. farmers are hard...