That farm people should be nourished inadequately when they can raise food just a few steps from their own backdoor is one of the paradoxes of rural life. A drive for home production throughout the rural sections of the United States would mean a vast improvement in the nation's health. In addition to production and distribution, there are two aspects of agricultural policy that have an important bearing on adequate nutrition for all the people. The first relates to research education. Along with new knowledge must go the wider dissemination of knowledge.
Education is as important to sound diet as are research and production.
Here let me say that in my opinion not only the United States but modern civilization as a whole will have to use scientific advances for the benefit of mankind much more fully, much less half-heartedly, than they have been used so far. We Americans could feed and clothe and house ourselves far better than we do if we dared make the full use of what we know. But we have hesitated, usually for fear we might make a wrong move and upset somebody's apple cart. I think it is time to be afraid that if we do not make some vigorous moves, civilization will have no apples to put in the carts. In agriculture, democratic planning has become definitely and, I believe, permanently a part of national policy.