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DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REPORT D-8072
SUMMARY REPORT OF CRITICAL MINERALS NEEDS, 1991–1995
TASK FORCE ON CRITICAL MATERIALS
MARCH 31, 1991
There is at present a severe shortage of materials, especially minerals, necessary for reestablishing the defense capability of the United States. While many factors impact recovery, including the necessary commitment of resources by the government, no progress can be made in the production of many microelectronic components of aircraft and weapons systems without necessary supplies of certain critical minerals. Prewar stockpiles have been nearly exhausted and imports are at present minimal because of present conditions in the world trade system and breakdown of prewar alliances.
This task force has identified eleven minerals, or mineral groups, that are crucial to defense needs and are unavailable in any quantity in this country.
Table One outlines these materials and the location of major reserves outside the United States. It should be pointed out that while reserves of these critical materials may exist, they may not be available to our industries. Recent political and economic postures put forth by the NATO countries, for example, suggest that internal restrictions may have been put on certain strategic materials. While it is not the purpose of this report to examine the rationale of these restrictions, they will no doubt further impede U.S. defense recovery.
TABLE ONE
PRINCIPAL SUPPLIERS OF CRITICAL DEFENSE MATERIALS
MINERAL COUNTRIES WITH MAJOR RESERVES AND PERCENT OF WORLD TOTAL
BAUXITE Guinea 28%
Australia 20%
Brazil 11%
Jamaica 9%
Cameroon 4%
CHROMITE (Chromium Ore) South Africa 68%
Zimbabwe 30%
COBALT Zaire 49%
Zambia 15%
USSR 9%
Cuba 8%
Philippines 8%
New Caledonia 4%
Australia 2%
COLUMBIUM Brazil 79%
USSR 17%
Canada 3%
MANGANESE USSR 45%
South Africa 41%
Australia 6%
Gabon 3%
NICKEL New Caledonia 25%
Canada 15%
USSR 14%
Indonesia 13%
Philippines 10%
Australia 9%
PLATINUM GROUP South Africa 81%
USSR 17%
TANTALUM Zaire 57%
Nigeria 11%
Thailand 7%
USSR 7%
Malaysia 5%
TIN Indonesia 16%
China 15%
Malaysia 12%
Thailand 12%
USSR 10%
Bolivia 9%
TITANIUM ORES -
a. ILMENITE India 23%
Canada 22%
Norway 18%
South Africa 15%
Australia 8%
United States 8%
b. RUTILE Brazil 74%
Australia 7%
India 6%
South Africa 4%
Italy 2%
TUNGSTEN China 52%
Canada 20%
USSR 8%
United States 5%
North Korea 5%
South Africa 3%
The minerals listed above, for all of which the U.S. is highly dependent on imports, are classified as vital to defense production and have limited convenient substitution possibilities in their major applications. The implications of worldwide reserves are as much political as economic. Only some of the nations identified are at present friendly with the United States. Other nations are themselves crippled as a result of the world economy and are experiencing difficulty in reestablishing prewar mining levels. Still others, including those under Allied spheres of influence, are perhaps being subjected to diplomatic pressures that make open exchange with the U.S. difficult.
It is recommended that this information be shared as soon as possible with the Executive Branch and with appropriate units within the Departments of State and Commerce.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE NEWS
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90048
Public Information Office (213-555-6263)
FOR RELEASE 7/21/92
AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION STILL DOWN IN 1991; WAR AND FALLOUT ZONES MOST AFFECTED
Agricultural productivity in America is still suffering from the effects of the 1988 war.
The first comprehensive study since 1987 of agricultural productivity in America has just been completed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The results reveal that even after three years, the United States still lags behind prewar productivity by nearly 50 percent. As a result, U.S. exports have dropped by more than 95 percent.
In 1987, for example, the nine major agricultural exports were wheat, oats, corn, barley, rice, soybeans, tobacco, edible vegetable oils, and cotton. In that year the United States accounted for more than 30 percent of the total world production in these nine products. In 1991, however, the U.S. accounted for only 14 percent of the total world production. Table One summarizes this trend.
The Department’s recent study also confirms early surveys, which suggested that the 19 states most directly affected by the war remain considerably behind the rest of the nation in agricultural recovery. These states were either directly struck by the Soviets in 1988 or suffered from high levels of radioactive fallout. Total U.S. agricultural production is particularly affected because of the high prewar concentration of farms in these 19 states.
Although the study covers all phases of agriculture, wheat production is used as a standard to reveal the scope of diminished American productivity. Table Two uses wheat-production data for 1987 and 1991 as a benchmark for demonstrating the effects of the war in 19 critical states.
TABLE ONE
U.S. AND WORLD PRODUCTION OF KEY AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS
COMMODITY 1987 1991
U.S. PERCENTAGE OF WORLD PRODUCTION PERCENTAGE OF U.S. EXPORTS U.S. PERCENTAGE OF WORLD PRODUCTION PERCENTAGE OF U.S. EXPORTS
Wheat 18.1% 53.0% 7.9% Negligible
Oats 18.3 5.1 6.7 Neg.
Corn 49.2 73.2 30.4 Neg.
Barley 7.3 11.9 4.2 Neg.
Rice 2.7 24.4 2.0 Neg.
Soybeans 65.0 87.0 42.3 10.1%
Tobacco 17.1 22.1 14.6 5.2
Veg. oils 28.3 14.0 16.7 .5
Cotton 20.2 37.6 9.4 Neg.
TABLE TWO
U.S. WHEAT PRODUCTION BY YEAR AND SELECTED STATES
STATE WHEAT PRODUCTION IN MILLIONS OF BUSHELS
1987 1991
Maryland 6.1 less than 1
Montana 181.3 32.2
North Dakota 352.6 67.8
New York 7.6 2.1
WAR ZONES
New Jersey 2.5 less than 1
Pennsylvania 9.9 3.2
South Dakota 93.2 8.7
Texas 189.4 110.2
Virginia 18.1 7.8
Wyoming 9.2 2.5
Indiana 68.3 43.2
Iowa 5.1 3.1
Kansas 331.1 170.3
Michigan 46.7 30.2
FALLOUT ZONES
Minnesota 160.2 93.2
Missouri 125.1 87.7
Ohio 83.4 43.8
Nebraska 115.5 23.2
Wisconsin 7.2 3.7
In 1987, these 19 states accounted for 60 percent of all U.S. wheat production. Combined with the overall reduction in the number of farms since 1988, total American wheat production is approximately half of what it was before the war.
The full report, detailing all aspects of U.S. productivity, is available as it Comprehensive Study of American Agricultural Production, 1987–1991, AG92-S1-8. Copies are available for PIO from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Los Angeles, California 90047, or from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in major cities.
I Will
The rich farmland of northern Missouri was dusted brown, the towns were brown, the late-
summer trees were hazed with dust.
Each town we passed through granted us a secret glimpse down its streets. An occasional decontamination team could be seen in white coveralls, seeking slowly along the sidewalks, or a cleanup crew with a water truck spraying the pavement. We saw into backyards where people were cleaning clothing, furniture, and each other with hoses.
And everywhere, as passengers came and went, we heard tales of the storm. It was the biggest duster in history. Winds clocked at a hundred and ten miles an hour and more in town after town.
Took roofs, cars, collapsed buildings, reduced a dozen trailer parks to pulverized aluminum.
Despite it all, we found a powerful spirit moving among the people that seemed at moments almost otherworldly, as surprising as sudden speech from a Trappist.
SYLVIE WEST, MARCELINE, MISSOURI: “I’m goin’ up the line to La Plata to see that my mother’s okay. We been in Missouri a long time, us Wests. We aren’t going anywhere. A lot of people from around here went south, down to Alabama and Georgia and Florida. There’s trouble getting into Georgia. But this is good land, and we just decided we’d stick it out. The storm? I’ve seen dust before.”
Sylvie West was the color of the land, yellow-gray. Her arms were as long and improbable as the legs of a mantis. She was missing her bottom teeth.
GEORGE KIMBALL, EDINA, MISSOURI: “It wasn’t all that hot. We got a real low dose in Edina. I’m looking at it this way—I just got myself a whole lot of good black dirt from Nebraska scot-free. Hell no, I’m not goin’ anywhere. I stayed right in Edina through the war and the famine and the flu. That’s the place for me. I’m a farmer, of course. I guess you could say I like the look of the town, and I like the people. The stayers, that is. The loafers and the new people all went south. But Missouri needs her people now, and I am not leaving,”
He carried a weathered Samsonite briefcase, which turned out to be full of warehouse receipts recertified that morning by the Knox County Radiation Board. He was on his way to Galesburg to present these receipts to the accepting agent for the Agriculture Department’s Regional Strategic Grains Allocation Commission.
His wedding ring was on his right hand, signifying his widowerhood.
ALFRED T. BENSEN, GALESBURG, ILLINOIS: “I am in the practice of law in Galesburg, Illinois. I have been in my practice for twenty-eight years, and expect to continue until the day I die. I noticed some dust. But I was working through some title questions for a client and I did not have time to deal with it. This is a man who’s been able to buy up over sixty thousand acres at auction in the past year. Abandoned farm properties. This man is twenty-eight. By the time he’s fifty, you watch. Illinois will have done for him what it’s done for millions in the past. It will have made him rich.”
He sat rigidly against his seat, his dark blue suit shiny from many ironings. He spoke as if he had memorized his lines, and been waiting for years to deliver them. Once I noticed him looking long and carefully at us, through brown, slow eyes.
GORDON LOCKHART, LASALLE, ILLINOIS: “We got a little dust, but most of the blow was south of here. I am an International Harvester dealer. As of December of this year I will be able to sell you a tractor, a combine, just about any piece of equipment you want.
What Harvester did was very smart. They just went out, over the past few years, and repossessed all the abandoned IH equipment they could lay their hands on. Meanwhile, they were getting the factories running again. Nobody was getting paid, but the company organized an employee barter co-op, so Harvester people didn’t starve, either. We have company doctors and now a company hospital, so the triage doesn’t mean a thing to us. IH people are a big, rock-solid family. We are going to make this land work for us again, maybe better than it did before. No question. Better.”
A moment later he was asleep, snoring, his head thrown back, the midmorning sun full in his face. One of the trainmen came and tried to get him to eat some soup, but after he was awakened he spent the rest of the trip staring out the window.
JOHN SAMPSON, JOLIET, ILLINOIS: “We got the prison here, and a sure sign that things are picking up is that we got more inmates.
Robbers, second-story men, mostly. No more drug dealers. That kind of petered out. Nobody wants to import drugs into a country where the money’s worthless. We don’t have many murderers, either. No car thieves. Joliet’s kind of quiet. About half the bunks are filled. We got the electric chair back, and once in a while somebody gets the juice. Illinois abides by the U.S. Supreme Court rulings, even though there isn’t any Supreme Court anymore. We still work under the old laws, just like before Warday. Why shouldn’t we? This is part of America, and it is going to stay that way.”
The other passengers kept away from Mr. Sampson. It might have been better for him to travel in ordinary clothing. His Joliet prison guard’s uniform made his fellow passengers uneasy, and he had a lonely trip.
Twenty-five miles from the Loop, we began to pass through Chicago’s suburban and then industrial outlands. The suburbs are mostly depopulated. People have moved into the city centers or rejoined the small-town economy rather than contend with the difficult transportation problems of suburban life.
Just as Chicago’s skyline appeared ahead of us, we passed a tremendous sign, red letters on a white background:
CHICAGO, THE “I WILL” TOWN
HAVE WE GOT A JOB FOR YOU?
I had again that sense of strangeness, as if I had come upon the spirit of the past alive and still moving in the land. It was a little frightening, but it could also fill me with the reckless energy of boosterism gone frantic.
We moved through a sea of factories with names like Ryerson Steel, Kroehler, Burlington Northern, and Nabisco. Some of these establishments were empty, but others were running—Nabisco, as it turned out, on what must have been an all-out schedule. A fifty-car freight was sided there, being loaded. People were swarming along the loading bays where trucks once came and went, hauling boxes on trolleys to the new rail siding. Another brand-new sign was in place here: NABISCO FEEDS AMERICA. I remembered them as a cookie manufacturer, but a passenger whose brother worked there explained that the company was now producing high-protein baked goods of all kinds: breads, biscuits, noodles, and other basic foodstuffs. I could not resist asking about Oreos. The answer:
“Available on a limited basis.”
By the time we reached Union Station, we had been thoroughly indoctrinated. Word had spread through the train that we were writing a book about the present condition of the country. “We’re sick of the ‘devastated Midwest’ cliché,” Tom Walker of Chicago said. “You guys make sure you see the real Chicago. Stay in the Loop. The Loop is Chicago.”
This is true, but not in the way he meant. From our own estimates, it appears that the city has lost perhaps half of its population in the past five years. Considering the destruction of agriculture, the famine, the flu, the lack of transportation, the economic chaos, and the massive depopulation, it is amazing that the city has retained such a strong governmental organization. All that’s left is the Loop. But the Loop is a good town.
Seeing the Loop, one would never know that Chicago had lost a single citizen. It has none of the subdued intensity of San Francisco or Los Angeles. The Loop is exploding with energy. The El works, and where it goes, the city works too. In the Loop there are buses and trolleys, seemingly by the thousands. At times it seemed hard to cross a street without stepping into one.
We are quite frankly at a loss to explain why this city, in the middle of what is arguably the most harmed area in the country, is so very much alive—or why the rural population we met on the train was so uniformly determined to reconstruct. We might have felt better about it if the energy of the place had seemed deeper and stronger. There is a frantic, gasping quality to it, as if the city were a runner who is beginning to know that, no matter how much he wants to succeed, he is going to have to drop back.
People who stay in places this badly hurt do so because they are
in love with them. I suspect that the only people left here are the passionate.
A lot of prewar Chicago shops are closed. Jim stated this observation to a woman on Upper Michigan Avenue. She replied, “Sure. And a lot of them are open, too.” It would be outrageous to fault Upper Michigan for being less grand than it was before the war.
Gucci and Hermes are closed, as are Neiman-Marcus and Bonwit Teller. I. Magnin is selling suits for two paper dollars, and other no-nonsense apparel. They had a good selection of imported perfume, but all of it was priced in gold. This was generally true of imports throughout the store. The two exceptions were Canadian furs and British clothing. The British sell soft goods for paper dollars; they get their American gold through direct transfer for government services and such things as the sale of automobiles.
Judging from the aggressive British presence in the store, the program of tax incentives for accepting dollars, which Number 10 Downing Street announced last summer, is beginning to work. Jim and I both hope that Neiman’s in Dallas (which is very much open) will have some British things by the time we get back.
The Gold Coast is densely populated, but it does not glitter as it once did. Many of the high-rises have a noticeable proportion of boarded windows. Glass is in short supply locally, as it is almost everywhere.
Lake Point Towers has had especially severe problems in this regard, and is no longer the uniform bronze color it once was. In addition to boardings, there are many areas of differently tinted glass, some of it even clear.
The Tribune, which we were told by a number of people missed only six days after Warday, is much in evidence. The paper I bought for a penny was in one section of sixteen pages. Here are the front-page headlines for Wednesday, September 29, 1993:
DUST STORM STRIKES MIDWEST. WINDS TO 110 MPH. RADLEVEL MEASURES LOWER THAN EXPECTED.
TRACTION SCANDAL. NORTHSIDE TRACTION BOND FRAUD THREATENS TO STOP THE TROLLEYS.
BODY FOUND IN TRUNK OF CAR. FIRST WARD COUNTS ITS SIXTH FOR THE YEAR.
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