to restrict
rather than to promote meat production in the present crisis
may appear both irrational and unpatriotic it may nevertheless
be in the interest of true food economy....

It may be roughly estimated that about 24 per cent. of the
energy of grain is recovered for human consumption in pork,
about 18 per cent. in milk and only about 3.5 per cent. in
beef and mutton. In other words, the farmer who feeds bread
grains to his stock is burning up 75 to 97 per cent. of them
in order to produce for us a small residue of roast pig, and
so is diminishing the total stock of human food....

The task of the stock feeder must be to utilize through his
skill and knowledge the inedible products of the farm and
factory, such as hay, corn stalks, straw, bran, brewers' and
distillers' grains, gluten feed, and the like, and to make at
least a fraction of them available for man's use. In so doing
he will be really adding to the food supply and will be
rendering a great public service. Rather than seek to
stimulate live stock husbandry the ideal should be to adjust
it to the limits set by the available supply of forage crops
and by-product feeding stuffs while, on the other hand,
utilizing these to the greatest practicable extent, because in
this way we save some of what would otherwise be a total
loss....

The hog is the great competitor of man for the higher grades
of food, and in swine husbandry as ordinarily conducted we are
in danger of paying too much for our roast pig. Cattle and
sheep, on the other hand, although less efficient as
converters, can utilize products which man can not use and
save some of their potential value as human food. From this
point of view, as well as on account of the importance of milk
to infants and invalids, the high economy of food production
by the dairy cow deserves careful consideration, although of
course the large labor requirement is a counterbalancing
factor.

At any rate, it is clear that at the present time enthusiastic
but ill-considered "booming" of live stock production may do
more harm than good. If it is desirable to restrict or
prohibit the production of alcohol from grain or potatoes on
the ground that it involves a waste of food value, the same
reason calls for restriction of the burning-up of these
materials to produce roast pig. This means, of course,