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This unusually candid declaration from the USDA provoked an immediate and vigorous response from various groups, organizations and individuals. Some, recognizing the wastes of an affluent society, declared that the problem was not limited capacity, but a reluctance to distribute resources fairly. Others declared that it was a moral imperative for us to become the "breadbasket of the world", today, and that the future would take care of itself. Still others are lobbying in Washington to establish food aid as "the cornerstone of our foreign policy", i.e., charity-by-law. Even granting the consent of the taxpayers and the good intentions of the lobbyists, this course of action is a prescription for disaster.
THE ADVERSE EFFECTS
OF FOOD AID
Consider what food aid does. 7 Each piece of land has a specific carrying capacity. That capacity can be altered by fertilizer, improved management, and superior crop varieties. But there are still definite limits to how many people a given unit of land can support. Food aid violates the carrying capacity principle by artificially allowing more people to live on the land than can live from it.
Today, in order to provide large amounts of food aid, the donor country must overcultivate its own land, farming marginal acres, destroying the topsoil, and reducing its future ability to produce. When a 10,000 ton freighter loaded to the scuppers with U.S. wheat sails forth, it carries with it 200 tons of nitrogen, 41 tons of phosphorus, and 50 tons of potassium—all lost forever from the fertility of our soils.
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