(See Cover) Every nation of Europe last week knew it was in a war of food. Food was rationed in every one of its 24 countries. Judged by the calory yardstick—that each active, mature male needs 3-4,000 calories a day merely to sustain health; 2,500 for a sedentary female—Europeans were not merely scantily nourished but acutely undernourished. The Poles were getting only 800 calories a day, the Belgians 960, Norwegians 1,500, Hollanders 1,900, the Germans from 2,250 to 2,600, the British 2.800. These figures, based on the average daily rations permitted, overlooked the larder-bare fact that actually very few people in any of the countries are lucky enough to find or be able to buy the amount of food they are entitled to.
Food, the most important single element in morale, is a crucial factor in World War II, and the struggle for it was one of the major battles last week. The plantings and the harvests of 1941 and 1942, if their power were understood and they were properly geared into the major strategy of the war, might be the determining factor. Certainly the nation which won the Battle of Food would sit at the head of the peace-conference table.
This struggle made the biggest battlefront in World War II—everywhere over the earth between sea level and timber line, wherever things grow and men eat. The Battle of Food was being fought as bitterly as the Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of Russia. Not many men yet realized that victory in the other great battles would never be as conclusive as a victory in the Battle of Food. But to those who did realize it, the fact was as sharp as a hunger pang. In the U.S. there was as yet no general awareness of the importance of food. But U.S. citizens were due for an awakening.
The man who was going to wake them up was Claude Raymond Wickard, generalissimo of the U.S. forces in the Battle of Food. He is a 48-year-old Indiana hog farmer. As Secretary of Agriculture he has the most widely developed system of alarm in the history of the earth: his 101,000 agents can personally reach 6,000,000 farmers in the U.S. within 48 hours. And within this week or next, every one of them will be reached.
The 30,000,000 farm people who participate in the nation's No. 1 industry will be told of the international emergency. They will be advised to change their crop plans from the five great domestic basic crops—cotton, wheat, corn, tobacco, rice —over to the produce the world needs more desperately—dairy products (milk, eggs, butter, cheese), pork (and lard), beef, fruits, vegetables. They will not be told that they are entering the first phase of the most drastic change in U.S. farm economy since the invention of the harvester.