Green Revolution' has already come
Greater agricultural output
costly, difficult in America
By DAN MORGAN
[C] 1974, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - The suggestion that United States
•technology can achieve a rapid expansion of food
production has been challenged following President Ford's
call to farmers to increase their output as part of the fight
against inf.ation.
A report released Friday by a subcommittee of the
House Agriculture Committee, called "Malthus and
America," contained a number of gloomy conclusions
about the country's technical and financial limits on
growing more food.
The report also stated that land, water, energy, and
fertilizer are all in short supply, and added that in the
world as a whole, "pressures of growing demand for food
are beginning to undermine the ecology of major food
producing systems.
The President's challenge to farmers to grow more
came at a time when many economists believe that the
Great Leap Forward in U.S. farm productivity already has
occurred, for a variety of reasons.
In their view, it is questionable whether new
technology, new seed strains, more fertilizer, pesticides
and irrigation projects could repeat the kind of dramatic
gains of the last 30 years in the United States - a period
when yields of such basic crops as corn quadrupled.
There is also concern that the weather has been un
derestimated by U.S. policymakers as a factor with
profound impact on output. Some
meteorologists say that the Administration has
assumed that technology has made the U.S. agricultural
system virtually drought-resistant. They say there is
evidence that the drought which damaged the corn crop
in the Great Plains this summer may be a part of a cyclical
period of bad weather.
Not all estimates are as entirely gloomy. Don Paarlberg,
Director of Economics for the Agriculture Department,
said in testimony before the subcommittee that the
United States has the capacity to produce 9.1 billion
bushels of corn and 2.3 billion bushels of wheat by 1965,
compared with an estimated crop of 4.7 billion and 1.7
billion bushels respectively this year.
But even optimists agree that greater output and
improved productivity will be far more expensive and
tedious to achieve than in the past.
Most farmland that was held out of production by the
Government during the surplus years of the 1960s is
being cultivated again. Since 1972, when U.S. grain
reserves dwindled because of enormous foreign pur
chases, some 40 million idle acres have been put back
into crops.
There are no longer any restrictions on growing wheat,
corn, soybeans and other essential crops, yet production
of all three fell below expectations this year.
(Continued on Page 13)
Famine spreading
in West Bengal
By WALTER SCHWARZ
[C] 1974, The London Observer
COOCH BEHAR, India — Starvation is spreading with
the geometrical progression of a plague in this district ana
three others in the state of West Bengal.
There is rice to be bought in the markets, within sight
of people dying of hunger. They cannot af
ford to buy even the meager ration, at subsidized
prices, of one pound of rice or wheat weekly a head.
In the former princely state of Cooch Behar. now a
district with 1,500,000 people at the most con
servative estimate, more than 1,000 have starved to death
in the last two months. A representative of the ruling
Congress Party put it at 3,000.
People have become so weak that hundreds more are
now dying every day in the four districts of Cooch Behar,
Bangkura, Purulia and Jalpaiguri. The government of
India has been trying to play down the extent of the
famine both at home and abroad, but even a casual visitor
can see it for himself. ..
Everywhere there are people, especially small children
and old people, so emaciated that they could scarcely
survive, even rf substantial relief were expected in the
coming weeks. But no relief is in sight, and next month,
when cold weather is added to hunger, the death toll in
this state will inevitably run into several thousands.
The immediate cause of the famine — the worst since
the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 — is not outright lack
of food, but that the poor have no money to buy it. The
West Bengal government has no funds for more than
token relief, while the central government in New Delhi
has not yet accorded the situation any special priority.
Torrential rains and floods in the monsoon destroyed
both the rice and the jute crop in some
districts here, leaving the bulk of the rural population,
who are landless laborers or have only tiny plots, without
any income, so food brought in from elsewhere is beyond
any income, and so food brought in from elsewhere is
beyond their reach.
As I drove into Punibari village, my car nearly ran over a
corpse on the highway. The man's naked body, with an
empty begging bowl by its side, might have come out of
Belsen. Nobody knew who he was, and villagers passed
by hardly noticing. He had died the previous night.
(Continued on Page 12)
\
In This Issue...
m the month of October Moslems everywhere celecmte
Ramadan with daylong fasts and night time feasts.
Columnist Jim Hoag/and reports on festivities in Cairo.
Ireland's Foreign Minister traces the history of Northern
Ireland's crisis from the arrival of stand-offish Protestants
on Irish shores 300 years ago.
While Southern Cal did what was expected and won
Saturday's football game 16-7, an inspired Oregon
defense made them sweat for it.
Paul Geis led Oregon's Cross Country team to victory
Saturday in its first race of the year. Oregon’s Terry
Williams finished second and Gary Barker third.