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Show I THE RICH COUNTY REAPER, RANDOLPH, UTAH Ernie Pyles Slant on the War: Tighter Competition After War Demands Soil Fertility Be Maintained at High Level Air Crew Invited Jerrys Elements Drawn From To Make Daily Mail Stop Soil by Bumper Crops Should Be Replaced What will the coming transi-;tio- n from war to peacetime jeconomy mean to American : agriculture? That question has been raised with increasing frequency not only by dirt farmers but by agricultural economists, too, as Uncle Sams armies and fleets have won smashing victories overseas and as prayed-fo- r peace becomes a closer possibiso-call- ed lity. One thing is clear. When the war ends, the farmers situation will be long as the war lasts. Food needs of our Allies and liberated regions may keep it quiescent for a while even after Germany cracks up. But in some future day it will become a worrisome reality. Reports from liberated countries indicate that the food supply situation there is less acute than had been anticipated. France, the Balkans, Poland and even eventually Germany may require less food from our supply than we had been counting on. Stocks of goods in Great Britain are reported to be 5,500,000 tons, against a normal 1,500,000 tons. These reserves have been built up e shipsubstantially from ments out of this country. If these were reduced to say, 2,000,000 tons when the war ends, there would be left about 3,500,000 for relief. Surveys by the Stanford Food Research institute support the belief lend-leas- from the army, they will be able to work more land than hitherto. Homesteads for Soldiers. The government is already planning to give homesteads to servicemen. When this is done, the owner of an expensive farm will be in a tough spot to produce crops in competition with the man who has no capital investment in the soil portion of his food factory. ' "The only way the American Fighter Pilots Are Forgotten Men Despite Their Brilliant Work By Ernie Pyle ( Editors Note): This dispatch was written and first published when Pyle was with the Gls during the air battles in French North Africa. He is currently taking a much needed rest in New Mexico. farmer can successfully compete A FORWARD AIRDROME IN FRENCH NORTH AFRICA. either in domestic or world markets in postwar years, is by producing While bad weather stymies the ground fighting in Tunisia, the air crops at a lower cost per unit. In war on both sides has been daily increasing in intensity until it has such a program, the steady use of reached a really violent tempo. mixed fertilizer containing nitrogen, Not a day passes without heavy But to the soldiers on the phosphorus and potash will be an ground enormously important factor. More bombing of Axis ports, vicious straf- that isnt enough, so they let loose and cities of bushels per acre can, and will mean ing with everything from Colt .45s up more food from less land. It will airdromes, losses to Tommy guns. on both sides and also mean more good food per acre It happens that my best flying constant watchful friends in this war have been bombto help build healthier human beings and farm animals in the future. patrolling. er men, but I wish somebody would Here, at one of sing a song, and a glorious one, for The need for building up the our airdromes, our fighter pilots. They are the forsoils productivity is widely recogall of us can as- gotten men of our aerial war. nized as a postwar "must. No Jess sure you that bean authority than Secretary of agriNot until I came up close to the ing bombed is no African front did I realize what culture Claude Wickard recently fun. Yet these our Now is the time for declared: fighter pilots have been through tired, farmers to worry about soil ferand what they are doing. Somehow Americans ing Pyle or other you dont hear much about tility. jokingly decided them, but they are the sponge that In answer to any farmers stateto send a telegram to Allied headis absorbing the fury of the Luftment that My yields are better to arrange for waffe them quarters asking over here. They are taking than ever, Secretary Wickard the Jerrys to stop there each eve- it and taking it and taking it. An counters with this question: ning and pick up our mail. credit should be theirs. Ask yourself how much better I am living at this airdrome for a everlasting In the fighters of the England, machinery and better plant varieties while. It cant be named, although RAF got the glory because of have had to do with those increases. the Germans obviously know where the great Battle of Britain in Over much of our best farm land, it is, since call on us frequentthey 1940. But in America our attenbetter yields are the most pro- ly. Furthermore, they announced tion has been centered on the nounced cause of accelerated soil quite a while ago by radio that they The spectacular sucbombers. a steady decline that would destroy the place within three depletion of cess the Flying Fortresses most farmers cant see yet, but days. went into action made when they which could bring a nationwide I hadnt been here three hours till the public more crisis in soil fertility. the Germans came. They arrived No great nation can afford to just at dusk. And they came arroneglect the productivity of its soil. gantly, flying low. Some of them There is still rivalry between the must have regretted their audacity, The problems of abundance, bafand the bombers, as there fighters fling as they seem, are a challenge. for they never got home. The firehas been. That in itself is always works that met them were beauti- probably a good thing. But of late They can be solved; and their solution will be the gateway to a better ful from the ground, but must have it has sort of slipped out of the way of living. But to the problems been hideous up where they were. category of rivalry it has develof steadily declining They dropped bombs on several oped into a feeling on the part of production there is no answer. That pathway parts of the field, but their aim was the fighter pilots that they are negeventually leads to decline and ruin. marred at the last minute. There lected and unappreciated and takIt not only is impossible to pro- were no direct hits on anything. Not ing a little more than their share duce abundantly on depleted soils; a man was scratched, though the on the nose. Their ratio of losses it is almost impossible to produce stories of near misses multiplied is higher than that of the bombers, into the hundreds by the next day. and their ratio of credit is lower. efficiently. ; One soldier who had found a botHuge Crops Robbed Soil. Bombers Need Fighters. of wine was lying in a pup tent tle g After four years of There have been exaggerations in drinking. He never got up during production for war, farmthe claims that the Fortresses can raid just lay there cussing at ers have special need for checking the take care of themselves without Germans. the up on their soil resources and for When the raid was over he was fighter escort. Almost any bomber repairing the effects of depletion. untouched, but the tent a foot above pilot will tell you that he is deeply Such a checking up would in most him was riddled with shrapnel. grateful for the fighter cover he has in Africa, and that if he had to go cases reveal that the soils fertility it. he would feel like a very level is lower than it was in prewar Another soldier made a practice without on his way to work. man naked of one been has the years. Fertility of keeping a canteen hanging just Our heavy bombers now are alnecessary casualties in the battle above his head. That night when he to meet wartime food production went to take a drink' the canteen ways escorted by Lockheed LightIt is their job to croppings have was empty. Investigation revealed nings goals. Peak-loa- d taken a heavy toll of the soils re- a off German fighters and to abkeep which the hole, through shrapnel sources of nitrogen, phosphorus and water sorb whatever deadliness the Nazis had run out. potash. Another soldier had the front sight deal out. It means longer trips than fighters Rehabilitation of the soil is thus a of his rifle shot off by a German ever made before. Sometimes they to if is level the n bullet. machine-gufertility necessity, have to carry extra gas tanks, which be built up and the productive Some of the soldiers were acthey drop when the fight starts. capacity of the land maintained in tually picking tiny bits of shrapthe competitive postwar period. They mix it with the enemy when nel out of their coats all the not they are already tired from long I a next day. Yet, as said, All things considered, the cost of flying at high altitudes. And then blood of was American a and drop plowing, seeding cultivating if they get crippled they have to shed. When this airdrome was first set navigate alone all the way home. The 8 is a marvelous airplane, Get It Early ! up the soldiers dug slit trenches and every pilot who flies it loves it. durThe War Food administration to in down lie just deep enough But the very thing that makes the bombnew a after each but raid, again calls on farmers to accept ing of capable of these long trips Lightning fertilizers their delivery during ing the trenches get deeper. size unfits it for the type pf its the winter and early spring, when WPA. Gls Outdig combat it faces when it gets there. the manufacturing plants can makes fun of himself Everybody If two Lightnings and two Messer-schmi- tt make delivery most easily, and on digging. Today some but keeps 109s get in a fight the Amerto store it in their barns and of these trenches are more than sheds for use when needed, are almost bound to come out icans eight feet deep. Ill bet there has the little end of the horn, because P. H. Groggins, chief of the d been more digging are heavier and less chemieals and fertilizers branch, in two weeks than WPA did in the Lightnings here advises. maneuverable. two years. is as "The individual farmer can asThe ideal work of the 8 The officers dont have to hound an or sure himself of Sufficient fertilizstrafer, ground interceptor, their men. They dig with a will of bomber. It would er by placing his orders as light their own, and with a vengeance. If be a far as possible ahead of the seaperfect weapon in the hands we stay here long enough well probson of use. If all farmers will of the Germans' to knock down our ably have to install elevators to get daylight bombers. Thank goodness do this, plants can be kept workto the bottom of the trenches. ing at the capacity permitted by they havent got it. After supper you see officers available labor. Continued maxiout as well as men digging. mum production and use of ferConvoying bombers is monotoEach little group has its own tilizers is necessary in support work for the fighter pilot nous trench design. Some are just of the war food program. who lives on dash and vim. form an Some holes. L. square These boys sometimes have to Some are regulation zigzag. field is the same whether the crop sit cramped in their little seat The ground here is dry, and the for six hours. In a bomber you be or small. yield Therefore, trenches dont fill up with water as large can move around, but not in a the farmer who is able to get big and coastal the mountain they do in a low at yields fighter. producrelatively The earth is as hard as tion cost is the one who will camps. The bomber has a big crew to do concrete. You have to use an ax make money when competition is as well as a pick and shovel. different things, but the fighter pilot keen. is everything in one. He is his own Attention to essentials is, of navigator, his own radio operad alarm sysYoud love our course, important in any soil im- tem. It consists of a dinner bell tor, his own gunner. When you tell all the things provement plan for postwar years. hanging from a date palm tree out- hear the pilots to do during a flight it is have In addition to good rotation, the side they When radio the headquarters. ever have time d growing of legumes, watchers give the order the dinner amazing athat they danger eye out for Gercontour plowing where necessary, bell is rung. Then the warning is to keep and the return of manure and crop carried to the far ends of the vast mans. refuse to" the soil, the use of mixed' airdrome by sentries shooting reAlthough our fighters in North Affertilizer is a No. 1 necessity. Qual- volvers and rifles into the air. At rica have accounted for many more ity as well as high yield will be night it sounds like a small battle. German planes than we have lost, important factors in the postwar When the alarm goes the soldiers still our fighter losses ate high. I been chumming with a: roomfarm market. Experience has demget excited and mad, too. When the have ful of five fighter pilots for the past onstrated that fertilized crops are of Germans come over the week. Tonight two of those five are higher quality and yield than unferguns throw up a fantastic Fourth of ' bullets. , tilized ones. gone. tracer of red July torrent hard-work-Ern- ie bomber-consciou- a good deal different from the manufacturer that of that Europe wont be much of a or industrialist. The farmerspeak production job will be completed. Vast stocks of food and fiber will be in storage; competition for markets will be keen. Industry, on the other hand, will be reconverting from war production to the greatest peacetime output in history. The backlog. of demand for virtually every commodity used in civilian life automobiles, machinery, building materials, refrigerators, radios, heating equipwill ment, household furnishings be big enough to require years of d industrial activity. Some economists believe that if peacetime industrial output and employment remain high say at about 150 billion dollar income level annually the demand for farm products would be sufficient to absorb a total production at about 1943 levels. But even if the nation's efforts to maintain postwar production and employment succeed, farm economy must be prepared to withstand some shocks. The switch from peace to war will inevitably bring changes in farm methods to cope with new techniques in marketing and production. In such a setup, the individual farmer who uses antiquated methods or who fails to maintain the fertility level of his soil is doomed to failure. Three Big Problems. Most farm authorities are of the opinion that postwar agriculture will face three major problems: 1. Farm acreage, vastly expanded to meet wartime food demands will have to be reduced. That means more efficient farming on fewer acres. 2. Farm surpluses may become a peacetime headache. farm income 3. will inevitably decline when the present abnormal demand for food slackens. In 1944 farm crop acreage goals totaled 371 million acres, compared with 325 million acre plantings in prewar years. That is an increase of 46 million acres. Commenting recently on the adjustments that will be necessary to fit postwar requirements, Chester Davis, former AAA administrator and now president of the Federal Reserve bank of St. Louis said: The farm plant has been expanded beyond the capacity needed to supply abundantly the peacetime domestic market and any normal export market that may be available. Farmers will face real need for acreage adjustments and in some areas shifts may be drastic. farm surThe second problem so troublesome be will hot pluses . high-geare- War-spurr- ed ? market for our food surpluses. When Germany Surrenders. Some decline in food prices can be expected after Germanys dee feat, for then both military and buying of farm commodities is likely to taper off. This need be only a gradual movement until some downward adjustment can be effected in production volume. By the end of the Japariese war, the reconversion from war to peacetime production of civilian goods should be well under way. Prices, however, could go to 90 per cent of parity for the basic crops. The government is pledged to step in at that level with support for at least two years after the war, so no further severe drop than that may be necessary. All of the foregoing factors spell competition in the farmers postwar operations. Farmers can arm themselves now to meet that competition and to withstand the economic shocks that will accompany the transition period. If they do some straight thinking they can be stronger at the wars end than they were at its beginning. First of all, they can safeguard their future by keeping their finances in a liquid condition, by buying war bonds, by shunning debt and by avoiding the of overexpansion through the purchase of additional farm land. Secondly, they can take out an infor long - range surance policy farm productivity by undertaking a soil fertility rebuilding program. Present high food prices have already lured some farmers into land speculation and overexpansion. Such recklessness brought ruin to millions in the wake of World War I. It can bring disaster again this lend-leas- pit-fal- ls time. During and immediately after the last war when food prices were even higher proportionately than they are now, many farmers were foolish enough to mortgage their own farms in order to buy more land, a recent statement of the Middle West Soil Improvement committee points out. The sellers were canny operators who preferred to take their own cold profit on real estate rather than gamble on the chances of food prices remaining eternally high. The memory of the crash and deflation that followed is still painfully fresh. "After the present war, American farmers will have to- compete in world markets. Because of current income levels the temptation to acquire additional acreage is strong. Spme farmers believe it is a smart move because with more and better machinery available after the war and their sons coming home s. record-breakin- (P-38s- ). P-3- whole-hearte- P-3- hit-and-r- air-rai- deep-roote- anti-aircra- ft s |