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High Protein Diet -
An efficient American
agriculture has “kept pace with a
changing society and moved
America from bread and
potatoes to a high protein diet in
keeping with the times in which
we now live,” Under Secretary of
Agriculture J. Phil Campbell told
the National Newspaper Food
Editors Conference meeting this
week in Philadelphia.
The Under Secretary at
tributed this shift in America’s
diet to the higher productivity
produced by research through
the land-grant college system
and more efficient agricultural
output.
“We have actually moved from
a bread and potatoes diet—which
is what we needed when we were
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plowing mules and digging dit
ches—to a high protein meat diet
which is more consistent with the
kind of energy demands placed
on our bodies during a normal 35
or 40-hour week,” he emphasized.
Mr. Campbell pointed to the
dramatic changes in per capita
consumption of beef, pork and
broiler meat as demonstrating
the changes in the American diet.
He said beef consumption has
gone from 56 pounds per person
to 115 pounds; pork consumption
has stayed just under 70 pounds,
and consumption of poultry meat
has grown from 27 to 50 pounds
per person in the last 20 years.
Farm mechanization has so
reduced the manual labor needed
for production of food that heavy
The Farmer’s Gift to
bread and potatoes diets are not
necessary, Mr. Campbell said.
“Just a quarter of a century ago
each person engaged in
agriculture produced food and
fiber for about 14 persons. Today,
each person in agriculture
produces food and fiber for about
50 persons.”
At the same time, there has
recently been a turn-around in
milk consumption for the first
time in many years, he added.
“The land-grant colleges and
universities, county extension
agents, home economists and
others who have carried to the
farmer the latest improvements
resulting in higher and more
efficient food production have
contributed greatly to our ability
to change our eating habits,” the
Under Secretary stated.
“In the past 10 years output per
man-hour in agriculture in
creased about three-fourths—
nearly two and a half times as
fast as the increase of 30 percent
registered by nonfarm workers,”
he explained.
The result of this, Mr. Camp
bell said, has been to release
more people from farm-related
occupations for the production of
other consumer goods which are
part of a more affluent American
society, such as washers, dryers,
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 7,1972
television sets, automobiles and
boats.
“Without an efficient U.S.
agriculture, utilizing the latest in
labor-saving machinery, fer
tilizers and chemicals, thousands
of Americans would still be tied
to the land producing food for
their fellow Americans as well as
for the rest of the world,” he
suggested, “rather than being
employed turning out other
consumer goods needed by our
society.”
The Under Secretary said most
Americans live in such a
sanitized atmosphere, enjoying
the safest food supply in the
world, that they take for granted
that what they eat and drink will
not make them sick. He said they
don’t recognize the effort it took
to make their food safe.
“This is why frequently our
people get sick when they travel
to a foreign country and eat their
food. Their bodies just aren’t
adjusted to consuming the food
and drink in those countries
which the natives are used to.
This is when Americans really
begin to appreciate their sanitary
food supply.”
Milk, also an important part of
today’s high protein American
diet, is another sanitary food
which Americans are so ac-
America
customed to that they take its
safety for granted, Mr. Camp
bell said. “We must remember
that milk is a better culture for
the growth of bacteria than
perhaps any other food, thus it
took a lot of effort to make it as
safe for the consumer as it is
today.”
The Under Secretary added
that the safety of milk is a good
example of the fact that food
safety “does not have to come out
of Washington, D.C. We have
obtained the safest milk supply in
the world completely through
enforcement of local city and
county health ordinances and
State sanitary regulations—not
by any federal law.”
And he said the effort to
provide Americans with a clean
milk supply has contributed to
the elimination of some animal
diseases affecting milk cows,
such as tuberculosis and
brucellosis.
Mr. Campbell told the food
editors that farmers because of
their high productivity “are not
the cause of inflation but instead
help to reduce it. This is why they
are exempt from wage and price
controls.
“Food prices to the farmer
vary up and down according to
supply and demand in a free and
open market,” he continued. “No
other segment in the American
economy functions in this way;
the prices in those segments
always seem to go up, never
down. The farmer, meanwhile,
takes his losses when prices are
down and recoups them when the
market is up. That’s why it is so
important that no price controls
be placed on raw agricultural
products—so our farmers can
stay solvent by being able to
make up their losses when prices
are good.”
Contrary to the beliefs of some
people, Mr. Camplell pointed out,
fanners are not wards of the
Federal government. There are
more individual producers in
agnculture competing against
each other than anywhere else in
private industry, he said.
The large number of farm
producers makes it difficult for
each farmer to accurately
produce for his segment of the
market and thus agriculture has
a tendency to constantly over
produce, the Under Secretary
stressed. However, he said this
excess production is sometimes
necessary to assure an adequate
food supply when losses from
crop diseases and failures from
adverse weather are taken into
account.
“This is why we must continue
to have workable farm
programs—to guarantee con
sumers an adequate food supply,
assure our farmers an adequate
return from the market-place
and balance out supply and
demand,” Mr. Campbell stated.
The Under Secretary stressed
that “considering the hours
farmers work; their marvelous
record in increasing productivity
per man hour; their high in
vestments in land and equip
ment; higher taxes, and the risks
farmers must take, farmers
should be getting a higher return
for their efforts.
“Yet the average disposable
income of farm people is still only
about 80 percent aS much as the
average income for nonfarm
people. This is better than it used
to be, but we are not content with
that. We cannot be content until
farmers are earning the same
income as their nonfarm cousins
in town,” he declared, “so that
farm families may be assured of
a better standard of living.”
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