Evening star., 1949-07-21
A Dirt Farmer on Point a

A pronouncement by the head of the
United Nations Food and Agricultural Or
ganization is refreshing example OF COM
nonsense sagacity In these days OF
bureaucratic toploftiness and routine
thinking. The FAC is charged with in
vestigating conditions in It's field through
out the globe and suggesting improvements
in every phase of the worlds food supply.
It has as its director general an American
named Norris E. Dodd. That the choice
was wise one is shown by his reflections
on a worldwide inspection trip he has
just made to check on the FAC teams of
experts who are at work in many lands,
especially the backward ones.
Mr. Dodd is highly successful "dirt
farmer" who started from scratch and
came up the hard way. Intensely practical,
he has no patience with theorists who
think in grandiose terms or of diplomats
and politicians looking for fat handouts.
According to him, 1t takes surprisingly
little money to get big results What is
needed more than cash is brains, ingenuity
and "know-how." AS he puts it: You
don't start with vast expensive projects
of mechanization" in order to better the
lot of hundreds of millions of people now
living near the starvation line. "If we
could bring half the world from the era
of the sickle to the era of the scythe, we
would have moved ahead hundred years
in one jump"
Getting down to particulars, Mr.. Dodd
cites a case in point from India. There,
he found that rice, major food staple,
is still being planted, cultivated, harvested
and threshed entirely by hand But over
in Japan he discovered simple hand
worked machine made of galvanized iron
and few nails which greatly increased the
speed of threshing. Mr. ,Dodd got sample
into the hands OF the Indian government.
which plans to turn out multitudes of them
for the peasants. The Indians had never
heard of this cheap but effective Japanese
device. Similarly, he cites corn yields in
Italy raised 12S per cent as the result of
demonstrations to farmers on the use of
hybrid seed and of Marshall Plan aid in
getting the seed to Italy.
Another point stressed by Mr.. Dodd Is
the quick response of farmers everywhere
to Improvements when these are simple
and within their means. In China, for
1llctoAlSC, a. lew Az CAPCh lAlcA1tdI OGctAOI1o
demonstrate how to eliminate poultry dis
eases. The news spread so fast that farm :
ers Journey vast distances to find out
about it. But such success depends on
getting in direct touch with the people.
BY contrast, Mr.. Dodd says that in many
countries he visited officials of the agri-
cultural ministries didn't even talk to the
farmers, and in fact had no notion of
how to get in contact with farmers. They
were shocked when I turned down sug-
gestions to look at their latest big projects
and said would like to see some farms
and talk to some farmers"
The basic lesson in all this is that ut
is not money that counts but training
persons to train other people to adopt
simple technical processes that require
nothing more than local materials and
local labor to produce. When that has
been done, it is time enough to talk about
'mechanization'." Mr.. Dodd Is an enthu-
siastic advocate of President Truman's
idea for the development of backward
areas, usually known as Point Four" He
sees In it tremendous possibilities, but only
If the program is not allowed to dissipate
itself in generalities and demands of gov
ernments for vast sums of money before
anything gets done.
Mr.. Dodd seems to be an outstanding
instance Of the American way" in the best
sense of that term. His suggestions are
applicable to many other fields than
agriculture.