In the nearly 200-year history of our country, we have never before run short of bread. Even in wars, severe drouths and floods, we have always had enough of the staff of life. Usually, we have had magnificent wheat surpluses.
Now our Government has accomplished the impossible. It has almost made the United States a have-not wheat nation. Whereas we used to have a carryover each year of more than a million bushels of wheat, our present carryover is now the smallest in 27 Years.
The president of the American Bakers Association charges that the United States has “a nearly zero wheat reserve, yet continues to expert.” He predicted that: “People may have to stand in line for a loaf of bread, the way they now wait in line to buy gasoline…. Shortages could place the price of a one-and-a-half pound loaf of bread as high as a dollar.”
Agriculture Secretary Butz says that, “though the supply is tight,”the nation will have enough wheat. But Mr. Morton I. Sosland, editor of the authoritative MILLING AND BAKING NEWS, puts it this way:
“The possibility of a poor 1974 crop is a grim prospect for the United States consumer. … Heaviest consumption of flour-based foods is among people with low-income levels. To penalize them for the absence of an American food-reserve policy is an unpardonable neglect of minimal governmental responsibilities.”
Our wheat shortage is not the fault of the American farmer, who is the world’s most efficient producer. It is caused “by deliberate Government policy. The Nixon Administration has adopted a new grand strategy which exchanges the big stick for the carrot in dealing with the Soviet Union. The Administration abandoned U.S. military superiority, and adopted instead a policy of offering the Soviets the goodies of the American free enterprise system, including wheat and other grains, truck and fertilizer plants, computers, and other advanced technologies
The Soviets have practically no money to pay for these goodies because they are spending their income for a bigger Navy and new anti-U.S. missiles. So loans to the Soviets are generously extended by our Government out of your tax money.
This Is exactly what Russian H-bomb scientist Andrei Sakharov was talking about when he warned us in a press conference in Moscow: “By liberating us from problems we cannot solve ourselves, we could concentrate on accumulating strength. And as a result the whole world would be disarmed and facing our uncontrollable bureaucratic apparatus.
In recent years, we have been subjected to persistent propaganda against building nuclear weapons because they are so costly. But it is rapidly becoming apparent that it would be cheaper and safer to build the weapons than to try to bribe the Soviets with our food and factories, and then pay for the bribe twice — first in taxes, and secondly in high prices.
