WE MUST SEND AS MUCH FAT
ABROAD AS POSSIBLE, AND CREATE RESERVES FOR PERIODS OF SHORTAGE WITH A
MINIMUM DEPLETION OF OUR HERDS.
CHAPTER VI
SUGAR
OF ALL THE FOODS WHICH IT IS NECESSARY TO CONSERVE, SUGAR IS THE
EASIEST TO DO WITHOUT. If the war and what it means has become part
of a person's consciousness, he wishes only the bare essentials. Sugar
is a luxury of former times which has become a commonplace to-day.
The average use in the United States was 83 pounds per person last
year--1-2/3 pounds a week--less than one hundred years ago the yearly
consumption was 9 pounds. Sugar was a rare luxury. It will do no harm
to regard it so again.
WHY IS THERE A SUGAR SHORTAGE?
Sugar is scarce for two reasons--much less beet-sugar is actually
being grown, and some of the cane-sugar is too far away to be
available. The sugar-beet, grown in temperate climates, and the
sugar-cane, native in tropical and semitropical regions, are the only
two sources of sugar large enough to be of more than local importance.
Before the war, 93 per cent of the entire world crop of beet-sugar
was grown in Europe. The industry was started by Napoleon in the early
nineteenth century when he was at war with most of Europe, and France
was shut off from her supply of cane-sugar from the West Indies. The
industry spread over the great plain of Central Europe, from the north
of France over Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary to Central Russia.
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