Butter Facts

Housewives hurried from store to store, hunting butter. Sometimes they got a quarter pound for Christmas. Oftener they got the grocer's excuse: deliveries from his wholesaler had been cut a fourth or a half, and his small stocks had long ago been sold.*

Thus the housewives got an inkling of a bitter truth: they were face to face with the most serious butter shortage in the history of a country that once overflowed with milk. The huge stocks of butter in storage were almost gone, and just beginning was winter, when butter production normally sinks to the lowest levels of the year.

Of some of the reasons for the butter famine the homemakers were generally aware: labor shortages on farms (TIME, Nov. 23), transportation difficulties, mix-ups in the entire milk economy. The same thing had been true of sugar, meat, coffee, cheese; the same would be true, they could be sure, of a coming succession of canned, frozen and processed foodstuffs of almost all varieties (see p. 17).

But most important reason is bigger consumption: the Army & Navy are now eating some 200 million lb. a year--and will need more as the armed forces grow. Huge amounts of butter are being delivered for Lend-Lease--a total of 8.5 million lb. between April 1941 and October 1942, of which 5 million lb. were shipped in October alone. And U.S. civilian demand, said the Agriculture Department, could go up to 2,600 million lb. (from 2,300 million in 1941) under current ceiling prices because of the nation's increased buying power.

But in the face of these unusual demands, the estimated U.S. production for the year ending July 1943 is only 2,100 million lb.--130 million lb. below the 1940-41 production. Hence, to equalize supplies, the Agriculture Department last week forecast direct consumer rationing of butter. Likely level: 17.5 lb. per person a year, compared to the 20.5 lb. the average citizen would like to get.

*In Detroit, housewives bought butter at $1.25 a lb. from farmers exempt from OPA ceilings because they had sold less than $75 worth of produce the previous month.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.