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48   The Future of Agriculture
     The Washington Post, Saturday, June 17, 1967

     Madison, Wisconsin -- Thoughts from a commencement platform:

     It is hard to imagine a more uncomfortable ritual than to don a
doctoral hood over an academic gown already too warm under the June
sun.  Nor does the ancient ceremony really succeed in distracting
anyone from the overwhelming news of the time: the rare though perhaps
evanescent success of military force where diplomacy had failed to 
protect freedom and dignity.

     An honorary degree to a onetime professor is a mere gesture,
devoid of measurable substance; but at the same time, it is a
magnificent reunion with old friends and colleagues and, above all,
with the University itself.  As the graduates file by to collect their
sheepskins, I fall into reverie what this process is all about,
daydream how Wisconsin is a microcosm of the world's problems.

     Food is the nexus.  The great university has grown from a cow
college -- the School of Agriculture where I taught for 11 years.
Its national eminence for scholarly inquiry is the flowering of a
union of 19th century liberalism with an early dedication to
scientific research in agriculture.

     The farm is still a potent myth in the state's image of itself
and in its politics, far out of proportion to the economic or
demographic importance of rural life in the present era.  Nor is the
myth wholly innocuous: I have seen many bitter regrets among students
who had made a wrong commitment to an "easy" course in agriculture
when the facts proved out the statistical odds against their going
back to the farm.

     The other great news of the day connects with that myth.
Possibly last among the states, Wisconsin law now finally permitted
the sale of butter-colored m*rg*r*n*, restricted for years as an
artificial protection to a dairy industry dedicated to butterfat.
This itself is a fascinating paradox.

     An early contribution of agricultural science was the development
of a practical test for butterfat in milk by Stephen Babcock.  This
helped protect the consumer against skimming or watering of the
product.  It was the foundation of dairy marketing and economics.

     Meanwhile, we have seen a striking shift in dietary habits (or
at least of aspirations) on the part of adults, and many take great
pains to eliminate butterfat from any milk they drink.  The "synthetic
butter" industry has also seriously eroded the demand for milk fats.

     The race between food and population is perhaps the most
fundamental issue in global human affairs.  We have read many
divergent forecasts and we certainly need to be prodded by gloomy
ones to have any hope of doing what is needed to achieve happier ends.
In practice, we will doubtless mount a marginally effective response,
with the world's average food supply continuing to run just behind
the need.

     And beyond that average local fluctuations in rate of production,
crop failures, ineffective distribution and barely timely responses
will continue to create pockets of starvation.  We will torture
ourselves whether to grow and export more surplus food to meet this
month's needs of hungry babies, and then ask how this aid subverts the
aim of agricultural self-sufficiency

     Suppose, then, that by heroic effort we could help accomplish
that sufficiency throughout the underdeveloped world.  This would
entail the long-term commitment of immense human and capital resources
to achieve an agrarian success that we have long since repudiated for
our own central economic goals.

     In fact, for the largest problems of producing calories and
protein, agriculture may become obsolete.  In a narrowly technical
sense, we already know enough of scientific principle to replace
farming by industrial chemistry.  The underlying problem is, after
all, merely that of converting energy into forms chemically available
to the human stomach.  Agriculture will then concentrate on specialty
and luxury products like wool and beefsteaks.

     The redirection of agriculture is the world's central
technological decision, along with the rational control of population.
But our efforts at a long view are now frustrated by the cries of
present hunger and by our inability to perceive and plan a world
economy for the next century when its politics makes mere survival
a tangible question.

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