From the INTRODUCTORY. Within the past year the United States has been rudely awakened from its dreams of plenty to be faced with the urgent problem of maintaining the food supply for itself and for its allies in the face of all the difficulties incident to a state of war. A National Food Administration has been created and entrusted with large powers to deal with all phases of the complex situation. Questions of the labor supply, marketing, price control and transportation are being dealt with in a large way, while nation ...
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From the INTRODUCTORY. Within the past year the United States has been rudely awakened from its dreams of plenty to be faced with the urgent problem of maintaining the food supply for itself and for its allies in the face of all the difficulties incident to a state of war. A National Food Administration has been created and entrusted with large powers to deal with all phases of the complex situation. Questions of the labor supply, marketing, price control and transportation are being dealt with in a large way, while nation-wide propaganda have been launched for an increased food production by the farmer and for greater economy on the part of the consumer. Crude Products Inedible.-But however bountiful the farmer's crops, in their crude state they are not human food. Some of them, like hay or the straw of his grain crops, can be utilized only indirectly by feeding them to live stock. Others, like wheat and corn, while they can also be used as animal feeds, are commonly thought of as being directly available to man. This, however, is only partially true. While wheat may be fed to live stock, man does not eat wheat but wheat flour and a bushel (sixty pounds) of wheat yields only about forty-three and one-half pounds of white flour along with sixteen and one-half pounds of milling offals useful only as stock feed. Two Methods of Utilization.-Two alternatives, then, are open for the conversion of farm crops into human food: First, they may be fed directly to animals to produce beef, mutton, pork or milk. Second, such of them as admit of it may be subjected to various manufacturing processes-milling, starch and glucose manufacture, oil extraction, brewing, distilling-by which a greater or less proportion of them is converted into forms acceptable for man's use, and the by-products of these operations may be utilized in the production of meat or milk....
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