Resolved, That the Congress recommends that the succeeding food committee of the National Conservation Congress be specially charged with the duty of studying the questions involved in the production, collection, sanitary preparation, transportation, preservation and marketing of perishable foods, and to report its findings to the succeeding Congress to the end that such report may be made the basis of measures to better conserve the perishable foods of the people, to improve the quality of such foods, increase their production, and to promote such relations between the producer, handler and consumer as will bring about a more nearly uniform price through each year.
Address, “Food Conservation by Cold Storage”
FOOD CONSERVATION BY COLD STORAGE.
By F. G. Urner, Editor, New York Produce Review.
The conservation of food may be considered from two points of view—first, the safeguarding and preservation of the food currently produced; second, the maintenance of those elements of fertility upon which continuous production depends, and the improvement of methods of production to the end that maximum yield may be realized from the labor and material expended. Both considerations are of the utmost importance in the present conditions of changing relation between the domestic supply of food and the needs of nonproducers. In both progress toward higher ideals is dependent upon an increase of knowledge, and worthy of such educational forces as can be brought to bear by a wise government. In both directions the United States Government, through the Department of Agriculture and otherwise, is endeavoring, by investigation, study and the dissemination of ascertained fact, to foster progress for the common good.
In the United States the development of food production to keep pace with the needs of a population increasing at a rate beyond all precedent, has been crude and wasteful. Beginning with virgin soils the stores of primitive fertility have been drawn upon with little regard for their steady depletion. Methods of careful and conservative agriculture that have been forced upon older communities have been largely ignored until comparatively recent years, when an appreciation of the near approach of the inevitable results of waste has turned forceful educational efforts toward a reformation—efforts which, however, have been handicapped by the necessity of overcoming the prejudice of ignorance and long established habit of carelessness.
Considered broadly, the question of conservation of food is far-reaching and extends to innumerable details. It is the purpose in this paper to discuss simply some of the general principles underlying the subject from the first mentioned viewpoint—the safeguarding and preservation of the food produced—particularly in respect to preservation by cold storage.
It is hardly necessary to enlarge upon the general requirement of food preservation. In northern latitudes, where months of production are, in respect to a large part of the food supply, followed by months of nonproduction, this necessity is evident not only to maintain a satisfactory variety of food but to secure a sufficient quantity. In the United States differences of climatic conditions, although giving an almost continuous production of certain vegetable foods, do not serve to furnish an uninterrupted supply of fresh products of many staple kinds, nor are they sufficient to remove the necessity for utilizing the productive power of the colder regions far beyond the consumptive needs during the comparatively brief seasons of harvest. The practice of food storage from the season of natural production through the season of nonproduction is, of course, to some extent, as old as life itself; but the methods of preservation have shared in the improvements that have characterized a modern civilization. And the development of these advanced methods has brought into the question of food preservation new problems, some of which it is the purpose in this paper to discuss.
Methods of food preservation may be broadly divided into two classes—first, those which accomplish their purpose by changing the physical condition of the food, as by drying, or cooking and hermetical sealing; and second, those which preserve the articles in such manner that, when used, they shall be practically in their original condition. The latter methods depend for their effectiveness upon the provision of such environment as will check or retard the forces of deterioration or decay, and it is in the ability to provide such conditions by an artificial control of temperature and humidity that the preservation of food in apparently unchanged physical condition has been greatly extended.
So long as food products were chiefly preserved from the seasons of production, or maximum production, to the season of nonproduction by the use of somewhat primitive means, and largely by producers themselves, or by methods familiar to the household, the food so held was accepted by the people as a matter of course and recognized necessity. Canned and dried foods were, and are, used with general satisfaction as such; and such staple fruits and vegetables as could be carried in their original condition through the winter months were consumed with a general knowledge of their age, but with a full appreciation of the necessity for such holding and of the comparative excellence of the held goods. Butter and eggs also, when held by producers themselves, even by primitive and inefficient means, were accepted by consumers in seasons of natural scarcity with resignation as to their comparatively poor quality under a general knowledge that nothing better could be expected at prices within common reach.