Metropolis Weekly Gazette

OUR SAVED FOOD
FED THE ALLIES
Food Administrator Writes President America Conserved 141,
000,000 Bushels Wheat.

Meat and Fat Shipments Increased by
844,600,000 Pounds.

CREDIT
DUE
TO
WOMEN.

Conservation measures applied by the American people enabled the United States to ship to the Allied peoples and to our own forces overseas 141,000,000 bushels of wheat and 844,600,000 pounds of meat during the past year, valued in all at $1,400,000,000. This was accomplished in the face of a serious food shortage in this country, bespeaking the wholeheartedness and patriotism with which the American people have met the food crisis abroad.

Food Administrator Hoover, in a letter to President Wilson, explains how the situation was met. The voluntary conservation program fostered by the Food Administration enabled the piling up of the millions of bushels of wheat during 1917-18 and the shipment of meat during 1917-18.

The total value of all food shipments to Allied destinations amounted to $1,400,000,000, all kinds food being bought through or in collaboration with the Food Administration. These figures are all based on official reports and represent food exports for the banner year that closed June 30, 1918.

The shipments of meats and fats (including meat products, dairy products, vegetable oils, etc.) to Allied destinations were as follows:

Fiscal year 1916-17, 2,166,500,000 lbs
Fiscal year 1917-18, 3,011,100,000 lbs
Increase 844,600,000 lbs.

Our slaughterable animals at the beginning of the last fiscal year were not appreciably larger than the year before and particularly in hogs; they were probably less. The increase in shipments is due to conservation and the extra weight of animals added by our farmers.

The full effect of these efforts began to bear their best results in the last half of the fiscal year, when the exports to the Allies were 2,133,100,000 pounds, as against 1,266,500,000 pounds in the same period of the year before. This compares with an average of 501,000,000 pounds of total exports for the same half years in the three-year pre-war period.

In cereals and cereal products reduced to terms of cereal bushels our shipments to Allied destinations have been:

Fiscal year 1916-17, 259,900,000 bushels
Fiscal year 1917-18, 340,800,000 bushels
Increase 80,900,000 bushels

Of these cereals our shipments of the prime breadstuffs in the fiscal year 1917-18 to Allied destinations were:

Wheat 131,000,000 bushels and of rye 13,900,000 bushels, a total of 144,900,000 bushels.

The exports to Allied destinations during the fiscal year 1916-17 were:

Wheat 135,100,000 bushels and rye 2,800,000 bushels, a total of 137,400,000 bushels. In addition some 10,000,000 bushels of 1917 wheat are now in port for Allied destinations or en route thereto. The total shipments to Allied countries from our last harvest of wheat will be therefore, about 141,000,000 bushels, or a total of 154,900,000 bushels of prime breadstuffs. In addition to this we have shipped some 20,000,000 bushels to neutrals dependent upon us, and we have received some imports from other quarters.

"This accomplishment of our people in this matter stands out even more clearly if we bear in mind that we had available in the fiscal year 1916-17 from net carry-over and as surplus over our normal consumption about 200,000,000 bushels of wheat which we were able to export that year without trenching on our home loaf," Mr. Hoover said. "This last year, however, owing to the large failure of the 1917 wheat crop, we had available from net carry-over and production and imports only just about our normal consumption. Therefore our wheat shipments to Allied destinations represent approximately savings from our own wheat bread.

"These figures, however, do not fully convey the volume of the effort and sacrifice made during the past year by the whole American people. Despite the magnificent effort of our agricultural population in planting a much increased acreage in 1917, not only was there a very large failure in wheat, but also the corn failed to mature properly, and our corn is our dominant crop.

"I am sure," Mr. Hoover wrote in concluding his report, "that all the millions of our people, agricultural as well as urban, who have contributed to these results should feel a very definite satisfaction that in a year of universal food shortages in the northern hemisphere all of those people joined together against Germany have come through into sight of the coming harvest not only with wealth and strength fully maintained, but with only temporary periods of hardship.

"It is difficult to distinguish between various sections of our people-the homes, public eating places, food trades, urban or agricultural populations-in assessing credit for these results, but no one will deny the dominant part of the American women."

A hoarder is a man who is more interested in getting his bite than in giving his bit.