Evening star., 1952-08-12
Man, Food and the Future

DR.. L. Dudley Stamp, British geographer and
one of the worlds outstanding experts on land
utilization, has taken wry view of our American
Point Four Program to build up the agricultural
output of underdeveloped countries abroad.
without meaning to belittle the programs good
objectives, he has observed that we ought to
regard it as being quite applicable to ourselves
as to peoples overseas. He has based this view on
what he considers to be demonstrable fact
overlooked by most of us here in the United
States-namely, that we have in our own Nation
vast areas that are decidedly backward in terms
of producing the food they are capable OF
producing.
Thus, as he has explained to fellow-geogra-
pliers at recent international meeting in New
York, DR.. Stamp believes that the United States
and the world at large will benefit If we pay less
attention to dubious regions like the Amazon
and concentrate more on making better use OF
the land within our own borders In his opinion,
we are not exploiting it nearly as well as we
should; it is underdeyeloped; it's wheat yield per
acre, for example, is far below that OF agricul-
turally advanced countries like Denmark; and
it could be incomparably more productive than
it is if it were cultivated in keeping with some
of the Point Four principles and know-how that
we are endeavoring to export Indeed, according
to DR.. Stamp, the Mississippi Valley alone, If
properly utilized, probably could provide enough
food for 500 million persons or roughly Is per
cent of the entire globes present population.
OF course, for obvious economic reasons, it is
understandable why there is no such food output
in the United States at this time. But 100 years
hence-when there probably win be at least four
billion human beings, or twice the current total
American agricultural production will have to be
much greater than it is now, and there is there
fore reason to give serious consideration to
DEVELOPMENT along the lines suggested by DR..
Stamp In the life of man, decades pass by in
hurry. Accordingly if he is to provide an
adequate diet for his fast-multiplying numbers,
he must make sure that the land at his disposal
in our own and other countries-is so handled as
to insure steadily increasing crop yield from
year to year. Clearly enough, If the yield were
to remain fixed at its present level while popu-
lation doubled or trebled, the future would suffer
an agony of global starvation.
Despite the Cassandras, however, 1t is highly
unlikely that there will be such future even
though at present large segments OF humanity
are worse than undernourished. At any rate.
wholly apart from the natural agricultural
potentialities of the worlds Mississippi Valleys
the age ahead promises enough food output for
everybody The geographers who have heard DR.
Stamp have also heard other experts speak
enthusiastically on the subject. In fact, one Of
them has gone so far as to say that chemical
farming and related chronological developments
can be counted upon to provide sufficient susie
nance for 10000 times as many people as now
exist on our troubled globe That states the
case in extreme terms, but it has the virtue of
dramatically challenging the pessimists who
insist-without solid scientific justification that
mankind's rapidly increasing population is Lead
ing inevitably, and fast, to universal hunger on
an unimaginably catastrophe scale