Global Food Collaborative

Alaska And The Tin Can   Author, Colonel O.F. Ohlson

"Wean Alaska away from the tin can,"

Such was the apt declaration made in a Fourth of July address at Anchorage by Col.O.F. Ohlson, general manager of the Alaska Railroad.  The assertion was aimed at the general practice of Alaskans in consuming enormous quantities of imported canned foods which can be supplied by Alaskan farms.

The declaration could be stepped up a point by insertion of the word "outside" before the words tin can. Doubtless this is what the keen minded colonel also had in mind.  Consumption of fresh Alaskan farm produts will take care of only a portion of the possible, production.  The surplus should be canned -- and then distributed.    To consume the Alaka product throughout the year necessitates canning of fruits, vegetables and the like to a vast extent.  The slogan then should be, "Wean Alaska away from the Outside tin can."  And that is exactly what should be done.   

Alaska in 1931 consumed fresh beef and veal imported from the states to the value of $514, 000, butter worth $525,000, eggs $462,000.  Vegetables and fruits imported ran into similar enormous figures.  Matanuska Valley can produce such foods in abundance.  When the Matauska farm colony land get to producing to the maximum, and the projected cannery is put into operation and the Alaska fresh and canned product distributed throughout the rail belt and to all section of Alaska, the territory will be on the way to permanent prosperity.   

Living out of the imported tin can is just what has played, mischief with Alaska economically and helped blled her white. 

More Alaska homes, and one hundred per cent consumption of home products and stoppage of drainage of Alaska's gold crop as well as her crops from the soil to the outside world will mean the big step in making Alaska an empire within herself - a populous and prosperous land and the Northland price of the nation.

Courtesy, Anchorage Daily News.   Reprinted from the Anchorage Daily Times (Read By Alaskans Everywhere), July 10, 1935.   (Yes, 74 years ago.)