8 Taking Stock
climate. An engaged citizenry believed in the role of government to
improve their lives through laws they had pushed to enact. Almost
immediately, the nation’s investment in government and science paid
dividends through higher levels of food production.
With that abundance, a new welcome reality settled in. Households
no longer needed to produce their own food. By 1880 , less than half
the labor force worked on farms.As workers left the fields for new
jobs in America’s booming industrial economy, families moved away
from rural areas. Instead of a nation of farmers as the founders once
envisioned, American society was quickly becoming a new class of
food consumers—one that, as time went by, knew less and less about
where their food came from.
The third relationship to food had taken root. At its core was the
“grand food bargain.” As with any bargain, there were two parties.
One was a rapidly growing society of consumers who wanted more
food with less effort. The other was a rapidly growing industry of food
providers whose profits depended on volume. The vehicle that kept the
grand food bargain on track was the modern food system. Like most
systems, this one operated with a singular purpose—continually turn
out more food year after year. Food scarcity, a fact of life for 2.8 mil-
lion years of human existence, would no longer control the nation.
Indeed, as the nineteenth century came to a close, food surplus
became a national challenge. The need to find new markets for a glut
of American products helped drive the former colony to begin tak-
ing its own, controlling five, including Guam and the Philippines, by
the end of 1898. As one historian wrote, “Merchants and manufacturers
salivated at the prospect of a launching pad for trade with China;
magazines and newspapers were full of calculation about the fabulous
wealth that awaited them if they could persuade the Chinese to wear
cotton clothes, use American kerosene, build with American nails, or
begin eating bread and meat instead of rice and vegetables.” Whether
it was expansion into Asia or, later, protection of US-owned banana
plantations in Central America,^ an abundance of food had become
part of American foreign policy—one backed up with military force.
The twentieth century brought even more food. Sixteen years
after the Wright Brothers demonstrated their first airplane, aerial
crop dusting began. Large warehouses were built to accommodate