Quiz time. Which is more important to you and your family ' food or petroleum? As you pause a few moments to respond, be aware that the U.S. government has already answered the question for you. And the answer is that petroleum trumps food, big time.

Since 1975, the U.S. government has been buying oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. According to its Web site, "the SPR provides the president with a powerful response option should a disruption in commercial oil supplies threaten the U.S. economy."

The U.S. government currently has about 700 million barrels of oil in the SPR, but its food cupboard is bare. Both situations - a full gas tank and an empty cupboard - are the result of governmental policy and legislation. While not having gasoline is viewed a threat to the economy, not having food seems to be acceptable.

In 1982, the U.S. government owned enough wheat, corn, butter, cheese and nonfat dry milk to feed the country for months. Today, those items are gone from the government's inventory. The reasons the government got out of the food storage business are reasonably straightforward: It cost too much money, and a strong belief that business, including farmers, should and would hold sufficient inventory to meet unexpected needs.

In view of the demise of government food stocks and the growth in the SPR, it seems farmers were trusted to make decisions affecting the economy but oil companies were not.

In addition to the government's ownership of food, there used to be a program, the Farmer Owned Reserve, in which grain farmers received payments to store their grain, for up to three years. The government closed down the FOR in the mid-'90s.

The SPR is currently being funded to provide a response to an oil supply interruption. Would a bad crop year for agriculture -- perhaps this year -- be interpreted as a supply interruption? If so, given their successful efforts to stop food storage programs, it seems the government is not concerned about supply interruptions in the nation's food supply.

New farm legislation recently become law. That legislation does not contain a squeak about establishing a domestic food reserve, despite efforts from a number of groups. Maybe it is time for the U.S. government to take a new look at some of the agricultural decisions it made last century. Times change.

Willam C. Bailey is the chairman of the Department of Agriculture at Western Illinois University and a former economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

www.lakesunleader.com/articles/2008/06/26/opinion/03.txt