Basic HTML Version
dependent upon the United States
for food shipments.
The danger of this overreliance
on one food basket was brought o,ut
during the 1960's when the Uoited
States sent a major portion of its
wheat reserve to India. U. S. wheat
preveoted a famine that could have
killed up to 50 million people! Ac–
cording to Dr. Addeka Boerrna,
head of the United Nations Food
and Agricultura! Organization:
"When there was a bad crop year
like 1965 in India , the U. S. and
Canada bailed the others out. But
now the real question is: What
would happen if we had another
bad crop in India? In Indonesia?
That is why
1
am giving the cry of
alarm. Can we reaUy, in this modero
world, tolerate famine with perhaps
miUions of people dying and no–
body able to help?"
The fact is that the United States
and Canada are no iOn er able to
at t e world with rnillions of tons
of surplus
too~
Unprecedented
sales of wheat and other grains to
Russia and other nations have
helped put the U. S. govemmeot out
of the grain business for the first
time in 25 years! America's once
bountiful surpluses of wheat, coro
and other grains are now gone.
Thus, as the
full
etfect of the energy
crunch settles on the world, the need
of favorable weather for the 1974
grain crops becomes even more cru–
cial. Now, rich and poor nations alike
are dependent on a single year's good
weather for food. But technology
cannot produce good weather, and
that fact has various officials more
worried than they wiU admit.
The United States has been vis–
ited by drought that has been arriv–
ing with alarming regularity about
every 19 or 20 years. If this statistic
holds, America is about dué for an–
other drought period.
Dr. Irving Krick, noted mete–
orologist and weather engineer, is
predicting a drought in the 1970's
that wiU peak between 1975 and
1978. He and bis forecasters were
able to predict the weather for the
Normandy invasion, and he was
subsequently honored by the U. S.
10
and French governments. Dr. Krick
feels that the dust bowl conditions
of the 1930's could return and this
time spread as far north as the Da–
kotas and southern Canada.
Ifthe United States were to sutfer
two or three poor crop years, many
nations, especially the poorer coun–
tries, would face unparalleled
human disaster.
To know the magnitude of such
an occurrence, one need only look
at the incredible amount of farm
exports expected from America this
year. The United States is now ex–
porting:
• . Three fourths of all the wheat
it
grows,
· • Two thirds of its rice,
• Hall of tts soybeans,
• ]:>ne fourth of
its
feed
graiAs
Of all the food commodities that
moved in world trade last year, the
U. S. accounted for 89 percent of
the soybeans, nearly three fourths of
al! the coro and more than half of
al! wheat and ftour.
Undeveloped nations have been
rapidly increasing purchases ofU. S.
food. Asia is becorning the largest
single market, with Latín America
and Africa more than doubling their
purchases. Without a doubt, the
United States along with neighbor–
ing Canada is now the greatest pro–
ducer of food tbat the world has
ever seen.
In paying the cost for petroleum
and fertilizer, there looms an impor–
tant question: How much money do
nations in the Third World have
available to pay for food imports
from the United States, Canada and
Australia?
And note this fact as well. Much
of the developing world has been
encouraged to jump on the "Green
Revolution" bandwagon. High–
yield, but disease-vulnerable "mir–
acle grains" have supplanted lower
yielding, but generally sturdier, na–
tive varieties in many parts of the
world. The success of the Green
Revolution - as is measured in in–
creased crop yields - hinges com–
pletely upon ready and continuous
access to the necessary fertilizers
and disease-control agents. Again,
the energy crisis will have a remark–
able impact upon Third World agri–
culture. (For more information on
this subject, write for our free book–
let
Famine .
. .
Can We Survive?)
It
Does the Third World
Have a Future?
mestic crops, ac
fertilizer,
shortage of petroleum for farm ma–
chinery and sharply reduced food
imports - all in the face of in–
creased population - may prove to
be the combination of events that
will push many developing nations
over the clitf and bring an abrupt
halt to two decades of world eco–
nomic development. The comment
by British author-statesrnan C. P.
Snow that "many millions of people
in the poor countries are going to
starve to death before our eyes"
may soon be a reality.
Sincere roen are striving to bring
the world peace, and equally sincere
men are striving to help the po!>r
and hungry. But the problems art:
simply becoming too big for hu:
manity to handle.
As the
month~
go on and food
crises become more acute, roen
everywhere
will
begin
to see the unfold–
ing of a prediction made nearly two
thousand years ago - a prediction
that only now is coming into true
focus for those who have eyes to see
itssignificance. Asked by his students
or disciples what would be sorne of
the primary sigas preceding
his
retum to
earth to establish his governrnent -
the governrnent that will solve hu–
manity's impossible plight - Jesus
Christ replied: "For nation will make
war upon nation, kingdom upon
kingdom;
there
will
be famines
and
earthquakes in many places. With all
these things the birth-pangs of a new
age begin" (Matthew 24:7-8,
The
New English Bible).
Happily, after the birth-pangs of
the coming new world order, there
will be abundant prosperity, a time
in which the plowrnan overtakes the
reaper (Amos 9: 13).
O
PLAIN TRUTH April 1974