Bread Per Capita, 1866-2018 (Thesis #11)
- C&C
- Dec 17, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 29, 2021
Bread is a staple food in many countries. The French have baguettes; the Californians have sourdough; the Germans have pumpernickel; the British have crumpets; and the Swedes have Kavring. Bread is a central part of 100s of millions of peoples' daily diets.
Bread is not everywhere plentiful. Famine, disease and war ravage parts of the world. These harsh circumstances make feeding the masses an extremely precarious task. Entrepreneurs, the United Nations and many philanthropic organizations work to rectify this woefully persistent problem. The abundance of cheap food, and as a focus here, bread, is not something to take for granted. [1]
By most measurements, the US enjoys a state of abundance. Calories are so abundant that two-thirds of adults are obese and one-third of children are obese. [3] There are 2.3 televisions in every American home. [4] The grand majority of Americans own smartphones. [5] This list can go on and on. American abundance is easily quantified with things that are in our faces every day. I think, though, that we forget our past too quickly and assume that the current state of abundance will last forever.
Currently, the Federal government does not track how much food is produced. This is largely because food production and distribution are decentralized. There are obvious challenges to count the food supply accurately, but I still want an answer. So, I made a few simple calculations to extract an estimation of production of one basic good, bread.
Bread data is not collected by a centralized authority or research institute. However, a couple Federal authorities collect data particular to bread. The Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains a record of bread prices in major metropolitan areas as a constituent of the "basket of goods" making up the consumer price index. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) collects wheat data, but does not track for what end the wheat is used.
Restaurants, grocery stores and, of course, bakeries bake bread. But again, it is a decentralized infrastructure of bread baking. Therefore, no master data file exists. This article attempts to shore up this deficiency.
From the top:
Wheat flour is milled (astonishingly) from wheat. The extraction of wheat flour from the wheat components, including the endosperm, germ and bran, changed over time. The changes were ultimately good and the milling process became twice as efficient. [6][7]
The wheat flour extraction process stagnated for over 150 years, but grew to twice as efficient over the last 70 years. According to the USDA, from 1790-1957, it took between 4.3 and 5 bushels of wheat to produce 100 lbs. of wheat flour. That means that it took between 258 to 300 pounds of wheat to extract 100 lbs. of wheat flour. In contrast, since 1957, it takes 2.3 bushels or 138 lbs. of wheat to extract 100 lbs. of wheat flour. That is a massive gain. (see figure below)
We make a couple of assumptions in order to see the statistic through. First, we acknowledge that there are varieties of flour and varieties of bread types. Second, not all wheat production is devoted to the production of bread. But for the sake of a standard, we assume two things. One, all wheat is milled into whole wheat flour which is baked into a standard loaf. Two, a loaf of bread requires between 2.5 and 3.5 pounds of wheat flour. Going forward, the bread estimates are bridged between low and high portions of flour per standard recipes.
*I am referring to homemade bread recipes (online). Streamlined bread manufacturing recipes may require fewer pounds of flour. Nevertheless, I think that the range is a fair measure of potential bread production capacities.*
Now that we know how much wheat flour is produced, we can estimate how much bread is baked every year.
The American polity produced enough wheat to bake 1.8-2.5 billion loaves in the 1870s. In the 1950s the polity could produce 8.7-12.2 billion loaves. In the 1960s, wheat production skyrocketed and bread production (potential) concomitantly increased. In fact, loaf production doubled to 16.4-23 billion loaves a year.
The 1990s were the height of wheat production and, hence, bread loaf production. Bolstered by increased yield (per acre) and high milling productivity, the American farmer could support the production of 29.5-41.3 billion loaves of bread every year.
What is the bread per capita?
Bread Per Capita equals the estimated bread production divided by the U.S. population (U.S. Census data). Simple! In the 1870s, there were 31-44 Loaves of Bread Per Capita (LPC). In the 1950s, there were 49-68 LPC. And again, with the great jump in wheat and milling productivity, there were 81-113 LPC in the 1960s.
The advance to a more abundant economic landscape cannot be more clear, but for sure measure: from 1866-1960, there was an average of 41-58 LPC, but from 1960-2018 there was an average of 93-130 LPC. Every single American could enjoy twice as much bread as his predecessors from a century past.
Since we have a range of loaves produced, we can also estimate the ounces of bread in circulation. The standard American loaf of bread weighs between 15 and 17 ounces (425-482 grams). When we multiply the LPC against the standard loaf weight we get the total amount of ounces that every American is obliged to. (See the table below).
Bur first, how many ounces of bread does a person need?
In the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that Americans consume 6 ounces of whole grains, daily. Therefore, an American needs 2190 ounces of whole grains, annually, to meet CDC guidance. Whole wheat bread is a source of whole grains.
If 6 ounces of whole wheat bread satisfies the 6 ounce guidance for whole grain, then there is not enough bread for Americans to satisfy the guidance for many years. We know this, because we multiply 6 ounces by 365 days to equal 2190. We then divide 2190 ounces by the estimated amount of ounces in low and high ounce bearing loaves, 15-17. The table above shows that from the 1970s through the 1990s, Americans could satisfy the guidance. Other research also shows that the American obesity problem began in earnest in the 1970s... [8][9]
America managed to keep stable prices for bread (Thesis #4, #5, #8), decrease the acreage of land necessary to cultivate 1.8 billion more bushels of wheat per year, and supply the masses with enough wheat bread to satisfy CDC guidance. Bushels and bread per capita data contextualize front end supply pressures that contribute to pricing measured in the CPI.
Footnotes:
1) It does not take a lifelong search between the reams of history to discover the motivating charge by hunger to innovate and, sadly, to kill. Two starkly opposed qualities in ingenuity and impiety rumble in an empty belly. Misery and tyranny perpetuate as hunger spreads. Solve the hunger and calm the masses, ameliorate despair and make the masses strong enough to stand against tyrants.
And this is the part when we discuss the republican virtues of industry, modesty and frugality, then say that in abundance those virtues falter in favor of indolence, egomania and waste. But that is not the topic here.
2) "Since 1800, average real incomes, this is after adjusting for inflation, have risen 22 fold in the US and 17 fold in Germany. And this type of growth has come to characterize industrialized economies."
Joe Kaboski. “What Would a Moral Economy Look Like? Values and Metrics." Lumen Christi Institute. June 1, 2012. Published June 23, 2014. 529 views as of 12/16/2018.
3) Staff Writers. 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
4) "Average number of televisions in U.S. homes declining." U.S. Energy Information Administration. December 22, 2017.
5) As of 2019, Pew found that 81% of Americans own a smartphone. The figure increases if the data is controlled for age. Pew found that 96% and 92% of Americans aged 18-29 and 30-49 own smartphones, respectively.
"Mobile Fact Sheet." Pew Research Center Internet & Technology. June 12 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
6) "Because of changes in milling processes, the following factors per barrel of flour have been used for earlier periods: 1790–1879, 5 bushels; 1880–1908, 4.75 bushels, 1909–17, 4.7 bushels; 1918 and 1919, 4.5 bushels; 1920, 4.6 bushels; 1921–44, 4.7 bushels; July 1944–Feb. 1946, 4.57 bushels; March 1946–Oct. 1946, average was about 4.31 bushels; and Nov. 1946–June 1957, 4.57 bushels."
National Agricultural Statistics Service. United States Department of Agriculture. Economics, Statistics and Market Information System. "Agriculture Statistics." United States Government Printing Office, Washington.
7) Wheat is tabulated and sold in terms of bushels. A bushel of wheat is 60 pounds. From 1880-1890, 480 million bushels were produced every year, on average. Multiply 480 million bushels by 60 pounds and you get 28.8 billion pounds of wheat. In contrast, from 2000-2010, 2.01 billion bushels were produced every year, on average. Multiply 2.01 billion bushels by 60 pounds and you get 125.9 billion pounds of wheat.
8) Bertrand, Marianne, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. "Time Use and Food Consumption." The American Economic Review 99, no. 2 (2009): 170-76. Accessed December 18, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25592395.
9) Recent trends show Americans gaining weight, waist size and body mass (BMI). The recent data show that Americans are not getting taller. I also think that the method was not well thought out in this survey. Try controlling for American generation and ethnicity. Height and weight data worldwide show that certain ethnicities are taller than others. For example, the Dutch and Scandinavians are taller than average. Unfortunately, American demographers fail to collect this data. Instead, they use debunk racial categories like white non-Hispanic, black, Asian and Hispanic. Additionally, despite all of the noise, Americans have access to tremendous sources of nutrition. Generation zero will look different than the third generation American. Do that study.
"Among all men, mean age-adjusted body weight was 89.8 kg (197.9 lb) in 2015–2016, up from 85.9 kg (189.4 lb) in 1999–2000. Among all women, mean age-adjusted body weight was 77.4 kg (170.6 lb) in 2015–2016, up from 74.3 kg (163.8 lb) in 1999–2000."
Cheryl D. Fryar, Moran, Gu and Ogden. "Mean Body Weight, Height, Waist Circumference, and Body Mass Index Among Adults: United States, 1999–2000 Through 2015–2016." National Health Statistics Reports: 122. December 20, 2018.
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