Take 10 minutes and read the attached. Garst is right and somebody ought
to do something about it.
Enclosure
Coon Rapids, Iowa, June 6,
1961
I wrote George McGovern this
morning and thought some of sending you a copy of the letter I wrote
him—but I have decided it’s better to write you directly and along
the same lines.
I write to you as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee—as a former member of the Agricultural Committee—as the
man who first used the phrase “Food for peace”—and as a leader of
the Senate—and a close friend of President Kennedy and a close friend of
Adlai Stevenson. That’s
quite a few hats I give you to wear—but they all fit perfectly.
Everyone in the United States—everyone in the world, for that
matter—realizes that there is a contest going on between the
Communist bloc countries and the industrial countries of Western
Europe and North America—a contest for mens’ minds—a contest to see
who—which basic type of political and economic situations can
produce the best standard of living—and the happiest situations—for
the countries which have not been so fortunate.
Practically all of Central and South America, most of Africa—the
Caribbean Islands—and Southeast Asia, all suffer from many things
but two things they specifically suffer from. First, they suffer
healthwise from a lack of the meat type of protein for human
consumption. Secondly, they suffer terribly from illiteracy.
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In the United States, we know how to tie these two shortages
together. We produced plenty of the meat type of human protein—and
we feed it to the school children in school lunch programs.
We and we alone are able to make contributions to all of the backward
countries of the world—we have the know how—in fact, we even have
the necessity. And this is wholly because we are so productive
agriculturally. We ought to do as you suggested quite a few years
ago—we ought to use this “Food” for “Peace”. You have been
right!
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The techniques are not difficult, Hubert. Our biggest move should be
chickens. We have roughly speaking, 1.5 billion bushels of corn,
grain sorghums and offgrade wheat. We are going to have a very great
deal of soybeans this fall so we will have at least reasonably
satisfactory supplies of protein.
We know exactly how to raise chickens—and in immense numbers. We know
that it takes three weeks after setting an egg to hatch the chicken
and nine weeks more to make it into the finest broiler anyone ever
ate. We can have broilers three months after the egg is set. We can
have eggs from a pullet six months after the egg is set. They are
the most efficient converters of feed grain into the meat type of
protein for human consumption that has ever been devised. They are
not dependent upon the weather. They are not dependent upon the
fertility of the soil.
Furthermore, we have the technicians—we have the models—we know
exactly how to do it. We know the cost would not be terrific. We
would have to have good unloading facilities—and good warehouses at
the port cities for a boatload and a half of grain—we would have to
have a good feed mill at each port or near each big city—but we know
how to do all of these things. There is no difficulty about the
technique.
It does not even require refrigeration because people in the poorer
countries of the world have always bought chickens alive and taken
them home and butchered them in the backyard or the kitchen and used
them without any refrigeration.
Believe me, the techniques are not difficult—the experts are
available in quantity—and I think all that it would take would be
about a three million dollar expenditure for port facilities, feed
mixing plants, bulk feed trucks etc. quite near to every principle
hungry port city. We could have the country involved take the
responsibility for borrowing the money from The World Bank—the only
insistance being that we insist that at least half of the poultry
and eggs be fed to the school children in a school lunch program.
The foreign government could sell the other half and pay the World
Bank back—because we are going to furnish the feed free.
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I have given the matter a lot of thought and I know that President
Kennedy is momentarily
most insistent on our help to Central and South America—where this
would work wonderfully. So it would at first seem wise to try to
carry it out through the organization of American states. But I
think the thing has broader aspects so I am inclined to think that
it ought to be done through the United Nations. I can’t think of any
one thing that would improve our prestige on a worldwide basis as
much as to have Adlai
Stevenson get up in the United Nations and just point
out that we are able and willing to be helpful—and that this is the
plan we propose to use as a first step—and my thought is that it
might be best to offer all friend and foe alike—specifically
including China.
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Not one of the Communist countries are currently producing [illegible
in the original] of the meat type of protein for human consumption
[illegible in the original] of their own needs. So we have a tool to
use that is [illegible in the original] way available to them—and
won’t be available to them for another ten years at the
earliest.
And we have the necessity of getting rid of surplus grains. Secretary
of Agriculture Freeman, with
his Food Grain Program, is being extraordinarily effective. But even
that program—and I believe it to be the most effective program in
history—will only get our production down to about our current
needs.
It must be costing us something like 200 million dollars annually for
storage of corn, grain sorghums and offgrade wheat that we really
need to get rid of.
How dramatic it would be to have Adlai
Stevenson come back to tour South America and rise up
in the United Nations and make that offer. What it would do for the
prestige of the United States is hard to imagine.
You are the guy to put in charge so far as I am concerned of setting
this program. I think you ought personally go over it with the
President. You know as much about the possibilities as I do. And you
are a salesman—and you are the originator of the idea.
With highest personal regards,
Sincerely,
