THE EDITOR TO THE READER

FOR NEARLY a hundred years the Yearbooks and annual reports of the Department of Agriculture have offered farmers information on how to produce more—how to grow two blades of grass where one grew before.

This Yearbook extends that purpose and group of readers. It deals with that second blade, and so reflects the changes in the scope of American farming. Now, ranking almost alongside production as the main function of agriculture are such factors as the marketing of farm goods, finding industrial uses for some, the interplay of price and demand, our changing preferences in foods, the care of the farm plant, and international forces of conflict and diplomacy, which can make dried eggs (for example) a vital need one year and a surplus the next year.

This book touches the phases of those factors that pertain to our central theme, the uses of farm products in peace and war. We tell all we could get between two covers about what happens to agricultural goods after they leave the farm. We set forth the possibilities of using surplus products in new ways, for this is largely a report of work in four laboratories whose establishment Congress authorized in 1938 to study such possibilities.

Modern farmers, who are as aware of happenings in Washington and Beltsville and Oak Ridge as their grandfathers were aware of happenings in the nearest crossroads trading center, are interested in our subject. They will find here practical information that they can use in planning their operations to take advantage of shifts in demand and need for their products.

But we have had something else in mind, too. We seek to help farmers by indicating to nonfarmers the extent and limitations of present and possible uses of farm products. Thus we address ourselves also to processors and consumers: Makers and users of plastics, cloth, drugs, insecticides, ice cream, and a thousand other items; housewives, restaurateurs, and others who prepare and sell food; sellers and users of oils, fats, and animal products; businessmen and brokers, students of applied sciences. We give something of a background for the products of the laboratory that are being announced every day. So fast does science move these days that we could not give it all; a key to a door, not the whole house, is presented here.

This book was originally intended to be issued in 1950, but a second edition of Grass, the 1948 Yearbook, was requested by the Congress to take the place of a new. volume in 1950. Consequently this book is dated 1950-1951.

During the time we were working on this book, many aspects of the work changed and changed again--problems of printing, the emphasis given this or that project, the prices and stocks of commodities, crop programs. Almost overnight we all but stopped using a very common word—surplus.

But the premise we started with survived the changes pretty well: Come what may, it is wise to give attention to the better use of the products of the soil. With only secondary thoughts in 1949 of world events, we found ourselves turning to developments in the Second World War to stress the importance of a crop or a process at any time, in war or peace. The word war in our title refers to that war.

In a few months, also, figures of production changed considerably, but we thought that average or "normal" figures would present a truer long-range picture, although they might seem outdated, than would later figures that reflect the strains of 1951.

Because of the different types of interest and groups of readers to whom we address ourselves, we have tried to make every chapter self-contained and self-explanatory, even at the cost of much duplication and repetitions of facts and definitions in the various parts of the book.

Our drawings were made by Elmo White, of the Office of Information, or under his direction.

ALFRED STEFFERUD.