FOOD, FEED, AND FIBER IN 1975
CHEMICAL-MID ENGINEERING
G r e a t e r Support of Research To Meet Man's Basic Wants in
NEWS
OCTOBER 7 ,
VOL.
1957
35, NO. 40
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Required Future
AN ERA W H E N iviucH of the $6 billion plus of the yearly research budget in the U . S. goes for military uses, it is discouraging to note the small sums earmarked for research in man's most elementary needs: food, feed, and fiber. These, in turn, call for abundant water supply and cheap power. "Suburbia" is eating into our breadbasket by taking out of cultivation a million acres a year. This loss is dramatized by the bulldozers destroying citrus trees by the thousand, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Such scenes arc being duplicated in many other sections. New homes, industrial plants, highways, and airports are going u p without any accompanying effort to preserve the better farmlands which will b e desperately missed as our population increases. Approximately 17 million acres of our most fertile land (nearly 3 % of that cultivable) has been diverted from agricultural use in the past 15 years. T h e new federal road program for 42,000 miles of superhighways will use u p more than 2 million acres. A situation already deplorable will get rapidly worse unless local communities and states adopt zoning laws to protect the better farm land. This will be difficult, and the chances are that little or nothing will b e done until too late, so scientists must continue to find ways still further to improve crop yields. Agricultural experts disagree as to when the country will reach a balance in supply and demand for food, feed, and fiber. Some soy it will be 1962; others insist surpluses will plague us for years—that if we apply our present scientific knowledge and continue to expand it, the U. S. can support many times its present population. Farm output in 1956 was a third greater than in 1940, with little or no increase in the number of acres planted—a scientific miracle. Some experts say the farm output required in 1975 may be a third larger than was needed in 1952-53. Much depends on new sources of cheap power and economical proc esses for desalting sea water. Some day atomic energy may open u p use of Western dry lands which, irrigated, could provide food, feed, and fiber for millions. But decided differences of opinion exist on the progress being made in atomic power. Private enterprise does not seem overly willing to pioneer, to the extent of investing $500 million plus, now, and even more later. Presumably Congress will insist that federal funds b e used, and in one way or another, atomic power in sizable quantities and at economical prices may be available within a decade or two. In 1952 Congress set u p an Office of Saline Water in the Interior Department and authorized a multimillion-dollar salt water conversion program. O S W has spent $2 million so far, and Congress this year reduced by $434,000 its modest request for $1,159,000 for fiscal 1958. Congressional critics have been quite vocal. A House committee recently scolded the agency for lack of real progress. O S W points out that relatively few scientists appear to be interested. Its director, David S. Jenkins, calls the program "the most difficult assignment in physical chemistry and engineering economics ever undertaken b y the Federal Government." N o one denies this. W e are far from sold on "crash research programs," although atomic bombs were developed this way. Money alone does not guarantee research results. But time is running out on us, in terms of adequate water supplies. And we will soon need c h e a p power in areas where conventional fuels are expensive. Meantime, if one or more of the desalting processes on trial in Harbor Island, N . C , pilot plants proves practical, the country will have bought itself a most important piece of basic engineering research for a mere pittance.
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