382. Letter from Humphrey to Rusk, June 121

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Dear Mr. Secretary:

Take 10 minutes and read the attached. Garst is right and somebody ought to do something about it.

Sincerely,

Hubert H. Humphrey
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Enclosure

Dear Hubert,

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,

Roswell Garst
  1. Garst’s Food for Peace ideas. No classification marking. 4 pp. Department of State, Central Files, 800.03/6–1261.