Ever wonder where all that "food" for the Marshall Plan..

Ever wonder where all that "food" for the EERA ("Marshall Plan") came from? Did it short the American housewife? Well, the answer is no it didn't infringe on the American market in the least.

To aid the nation’s farmers in 1933, one of the "alphabet soup" departments formed by the new FDR administration was the Commodity Credit Corporation. By 1939 the farmers had been saved for the most part, the food was flowing to the public and some even being exported, and the CCC was transferred to the USDA.

The CCC Charter Act, as amended, aids producers through loans, purchases, payments, and other operations, and makes available materials and facilities required in the production and marketing of agricultural commodities. The CCC Charter Act also authorizes the sale of agricultural commodities to other government agencies and to foreign governments and the donation of food to domestic, foreign, or international relief agencies. CCC also assists in the development of new domestic and foreign markets and marketing facilities for agricultural commodities.

See:

Commodity Credit Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an example of a good idea working a little too good. It saved the farmers of the thirties, and kept them producing at record rates throughout the war years, and as a consequence fed not only America and its military, but a great percentage of our allies as well. The troops may have complained about the "SPAM, powdered eggs and milk", but it was sure better than spoiled food or nothing at all. This war storage problem also gave impetus to the perfection of freeze drying of some vegetables and tubers at the commercial level. The first to go from a "lab trick" to industrial production were potatoes, which was a mimic of the Inca storage of their tubers in the Andes. High altitude, low humidity, and the potatoes would rejuvenate when boiled even after years in the caves. This process was extended to blood plasma as well, so that the plasm could be shipped sans special requirements to the front for use.

At any rate by war’s end, the American farmers had gotten into a real production mode, and it isn’t just something you can turn off like a water hose. The price support "floors" were now artificially high, but those had been needed before and during the war years. Now that the war was over, they should have been allowed to "float" on the supply and demand concept. Oddly enough it was Republican Congressmen who opposed this, especially those from the "farm states" in the mid-west, and so the CCC was re-capitalized post-war by a Republican Congress, and signed by President Truman.

Here is an article that I found in a Time magazine from Dec. 19th, 1949. This dates to after the time when the Marshall Plan" was proposed in 1947, and actually implemented in 1948. Even the Marshall Plan couldn’t "eat up" the US farmer’s overproduction, which was supplemented by the CCC with its purchase price support "floors".

When thinking about what Europe needed; "…The group's first request from the U.S. was for food. As Allen W. Dulles (who later became director of the CIA) argued, "What do we contribute? In first line, it will be food, fuel and fertilizer, to keep body and soul together, so that there will be men and women in Europe with the strength and the will to work. And then they will be given some of the tools so that they can increase their own production of food, fuel, and fertilizer."

At first, the nations at the Paris conference came up with a plan that totaled $29 billion. Through some quiet diplomacy, the U.S. scaled that figure down to a $22 billion request over four years. The request included foodstuffs, fuel, cotton, agricultural and mining machinery, transportation equipment, iron and steel manufacturing equipment, and tobacco. Combining the food, fuel, cotton and tobacco products totaled over 75 percent of all requests for assistance.

Three-quarters of the proposed plan would go to buy products from American farmers. The proposal came at a good time because, in 1947, U.S. farmers had harvested the greatest wheat crop in history. Many agricultural commodities were in excess supply, and Europe didn't have the money to buy them.

Through out 1948 and into 1949, for a while it looked as if the U.S. farmer could blithely ignore the law of supply & demand.

When he grew more wheat or collected more eggs than the public would buy at his price, the Government's Commodity Credit Corp. bailed him out. That was all right during the war, when CCC, with $4,750,000,000 to draw on, could sell whatever it bought. Even as late as June 1948, CCC had laid out a mere $294 million.

But in the 16 months since, CCC purchases—to keep the farmer's income up—had increased fantastically. Last week CCC President Ralph S. Trigg announced that CCC had tied up more than $3 billion in mountains of produce it could not get off its hands, and indicated that it would probably have to spend another billion by next June.

By such buying, the U.S. Government had become the nation's No. 1 warehouse, currently stuck with more corn, wheat and cotton than that held by all the private firms in the nation. Among the items laid up in Government storehouses, grain elevators and cold-storage caves:

230 million pounds of dried milk.
95 million pounds of butter.
22 million pounds of Cheddar cheese, stored mostly in Wisconsin.
64 million pounds of dried eggs (the equivalent of 192-million-dozen eggs).
35 million pounds of Mexican canned meat (bought in a deal which allowed the U.S. to invade Mexico to stamp out the foot & mouth disease).
172 million bushels of wheat.
83 million bushels of corn (and about 300 million bushels more expected by next May).
3,750,000 bales of cotton.

See:

FARMERS: Plague of Plenty - TIME

The 35 million pounds of Mexican canned meat was interesting in my mind, it wasn't SPAM, but a canned beef product in "gravy". Totally safe to consume, but country of origin wasn't required, it isn't even today. Foot and mouth (hoof and mouth) is rarely a killer in the human population like "mad cow disease", but still I wonder where that meat went?