AMERICA & AUSTRALIA

Hokitika Guardian, 27 March 1920, Page 4

AMERICA & AUSTRALIA

(By P. E. Quinn, in a Sydney Paper)

The world has had abundant opportunity in recent years to observe the danger of attempting to feed a huge industrial population in great part upon imported food. The experiment went close to disaster—the greatest national disaster in all history. But for American food supplies Great Britain would have been starved into submission to Germany; and on the other hand it was the highly developed agricultural production of Germany which enabled the great army and vast population to carry on in the face of a blockade which stopped all imports of food from oversea. America’s prosperity is based on the farm. Long years before her unrivalled industrial development began her place among the great was assured by her agricultural production. An side by side with the majestic industrial progress there has been an equivalent agricultural development. Tbe two, in fact, interlock. And in the wane of agriculture there lias followed a remarkable sequence of industries concerned with the products of agriculture, of which we know very little in Australia. A New South Wales Minister recently spoke with something like emotion of the value of the American peanut crop. But this is only a small or rather a secondary industry of the land. The total of America’s production from farm and orchard is overwhelming. The orange industry in California only became commercially p

sible through irrigation. The Californian crop now represents 40 per cent of the total orange crop of the globe. It is said that we grow two varieties of sweet potato in Australia. In America it is claimed that they grow 33 varieties. But the fringe of this subject even cannot be touched hero. It is necessary to read the publication of the United States Department of Agriculture to obtain an impression of the output of the land in America. Much of the sustained progress of the agricultural industry is due to this Department of Agriculture. Of all the State departments it is the best. Its results are a triumph of imagination, knowledge, and tireless research. America is not merely providing for a groat population constantly growing by natural increase and by the influx of a great tide of immigration, but is still able to send a vast surplus of food stuffs abroad to feed loss fortunate Europe. But the time will surely come when the United States will consume its own production. Under the stimulus of a guaranteed price the farmer in the United States is now a willing grower of wheat. The 1919 crop was estimated at 940,065,000 bushels* and when the Government withdraws the guarantee the farmers will turn their land to other uses. xYt its best, when all “cut over” and reclamation lands are utilised, and all irrigation projects in being, the wheat crop of the United States will probably not be more than 1,25,000,000 bushels. The average consumption per head is 5J bushels. The population is now about 110,000,000. Corn and its various preparations are much more freely used in the United States than in Australia, particularly in the southern States, but not much com is exported. In another generation probably the United States will disappear from the list of wheat-exporting countries, and the onus of feeding the dense population of the old world with bread will be cast upon the great arable areas with small populations—the Argentine, South Africa, and Australia. Although corn is not- exported largely it still helps exportation, being led to livestock and so producing the beef and bog products which are so largely sent abroad. The bulk of the immense corn crop is fed to live stock on the farms because it is more profitable to use it that way. When wheat in 1912 touched 70 cents some farmers fed it to stock instead of marketing it. Range cattle never put on anything like the condition of cattle fed on Australian grasses. Where stock other than dairy cattle in Australia are hand-fed, it is almost always due to drought and for the preservation of valuable stock., but in America they are fed for the market and as a compulsion of the severe climate. Naturally this increases the cost of meat production, and one can understand why, before the war, a porterhouse steak for one person cost a dollar and twenty-five cents at any good class restaurant. The price to-day has apparently doubled, either through the war and its disturbing influences, or through the wiles of the packing-houses.

Under ordinary conditions there is no parity between the cost of producing meat in Australia and America. Providing that we shall continue to have a surplus of meat to export, America in the future should be one of our most valuable markets; that is, if the controllers of meat supplies in the United States are (1) willing to consent to such a trade, or (2) so smashed that they cannot object. llow completely the consumer in America in America is in the grip of the packing-houses is shown in the report of the Federal Trade Commission. The five big packers apparently have an organisation which threatens the monopoly not only of moat-stuff's and its by-products, hut of many other food products as well. Their monopoly of abattoirs, terminals, cokl storage, warehouses, refrigerated cars and steamers makes them a truly formidable organisation. When New South Wales meat was introduced into the Pacific Coast some years ago the particular member of the Big Five which operates there had a scientific method of meeting the invasion. In order to assist in tlie importation and sale of our meat, ail appeal was made to the retail butchers and to the Housewives’ j Longue, a consumers’ organisation of women which has, at times, done fine service in breaking high prices, mainly by the use of the boycott but occasionally by the purchase and distribution of food commodities in impromptu markets. The retail butchers were quite enthusiastic at the outset, but later on a change came. The retail butcher requires other things besides beef and mutton, such as sausages, tripe, lard, black pudding, liver, tongues, etc. Owing to its control of the abattoirs, the big packing-house had a monopoly of all these things. It was not necessary for it to forbid the butcher to sell Australian moat. Such a command would have brought the packing-house up against the law. Mysteriously, its carts suddenly developed a habit of passing by the shops winch sold Australian meat. When the butcher complained ho was told to get his etceteras

where he got his meat. Then he climbed down, naturally. But for the intervention of the war the fight would have gone on, and the Federal Government would have been appealed to. When Germany was approached to allow the importation of Australian meat, some ten years ago, permission was refused on the grounds that the viscera of the slaughtered animals were not available for German inspection, and that as the state of these is the surest index of the health of the animal, the wholesomeness of Australian meat could not he definitely determined in their absence. This was a German excuse, of course, but a good one. The city health officers of San Francisco did not take this stand, because an arrangement was made with the U.S. Federal authorities by which the certificate of the inspector was accepted. Nevertheless, there was a rigid inspection of the imported meat, and searching questions were asked regarding the absence of the brisket, and tbe significance of this as bearing on the existence of nodules (worm-nests) in Australian beef, these being generally located in the brisket. The independent American importer of Australian meat will find it a difficult fight to defeat- the packers. Not that the latter has any special objection to the importation of Australian meat; only he wants to do the importing himself, and is probably doing it already. That Australian frozen rabbits could bo profitably introduced into New York and other eastern cities there can be no doubt at all, but this depends primarily upon the availability of refrigerated ships. Supposing even that the American or Anglo-Saxon originates a prejudice against rabbit meat (which is by no means sure) there are in New York alone millions of consumers of other extraction wilto would have no such prejudice—millions of people in eastern cities to whom meat is nearly always a luxury, who would eagerly welcome rabbits. In fact, the raising oi a rabbits for food lias been seriously suggested in the United States, and is more than suggested in Canada, whore something in this way is already being done, although rabbits reared on garden stuff would not he wild rabbits, and, perhaps, would he little less expensive than other meats. The American is not yet eating horse-flesh, as they do in Europe, but two new meats have recently appeared on tbe market—whale beef and reindeer meat. The whale furnishes about 15,0001 b of beef, and this meat is sold in Seattle at 10 cents per pound. It is said to be little inferior to ordinary beef. Canned whale meat has found its way as far south as Samoa. Naturally, whale beef is wasted here.

In waste, Australia is the world’s prodigal. Reindeer meat conics from Alaska, a place not naturally the habitat of the reindeer. About 30 years ago the American Government decided that there was no reason why the reindeer should not flourish in Alaska. A number were introduced and given to the Esquimaux. The reindeer took kindly to its new surroundings, and there are now large herds in Alaska, which have made many of the Esquimaux comparatively wealthy, and have also improved the social order of these nomads. It is expected that eventually the reindeer of Alaska will prove an immense source of meat supply to the United States, and the herds have already reached such numbers that the flesh is being sold in the markets, at least, on the Pacific Coast. All these indications of the growing shortage ot meat-food in America teach the lesson that Australia’s possession of vast natural pastures will give her an ever more commanding position if those pastures are developed as they should be—that is, to their utmost capacity.