The cagy Scotsmen and Englishmen who run the company observed that U.S. food corporations, for all their huge size, were beginning to move out of the "premanufacturing" phases of the business. Meat packers weren't doing well. Canners were pressed by pricing problems, and freezers were under the same gun. Supermarkets in particular insisted on such price cutting that the profit was wrung out of the frozen food business.

Just how the British corporation intends to elude the problems that bedeviled others and drove the original Birds Eye label largely into the sauced specialty dishes area, isn't too apparent. One thing, however, is clear-the Britons believe we Americans have underestimated the importance of one of our very own gadgets, the microwave oven.

At a recent demonstration at headquarters in San Mateo, the company served a full luncheon of microwave-cooked goodies to a group of leading industrial leaders and newsmen. They amply proved that the previous limitation of the cooking process to one dish at a time has been overcome, at least in part. The outlook, according to Peter A. J. Gardiner, the president of Dalgety, Inc. is for one-pass cooking of whole meals in the oven.

But the U.S. corporation also intends to branch out into food service distribution, a branch of the industry that is lucrative and competitive. It two weeks ago completed the acquisition of a Chicago company, Martin Brower Inc., that is the largest servicer, sending hamburger and other needs to 55 percent of McDonald's restaurants. The company also services other restaurants, but carefully avoids fast-food restaurants that confront McDonald's hamburger operation.

Says Gardiner with some enthusiasm: "McDonald's is by far the most costefficient of all the fast-food operations."

In 1977, the last year for full statistics, Americans spent $38 per capita for fast food-$17 of it in McDonald's outposts. The chain deliberately chooses to stay out of the distribution business, encouraging independently owned suppliers, from whom it expects "dedicated" serice-i.e., no fooling around with competitors of McDonald's. The service company takes beef paid for by the chain, forms it into patties, freezes it by liquid nitrogen process, and distributes it to McDonald's outlets on a once or twice weekly basis. Service also includes the catsup-topaper-towel needs. None of McDonald's competitors has the close and intensive links with its suppliers-Burger King has 100 approved suppliers for a much thinner network of restaurants and for the West Coast has to rely on shipments from its Texas supplier.

Peter Gardiner, a burly and energetic former rugby football star, has high expectations from the Martin Brower acquisition, which was purchased from Clorox of Oakland, a company that felt the strain of management decisions in a business that wasn't quite compatible with its bleach and cleaner lines.

Dalgety got into California through its 1966 acquisition of one of San Francisco's oldest merchant trader companies, Balfour Guthrie, Ltd., a branch of a British-Scottish merchant partnership which was very much like the original Dalgety in its post-Gold Rush California situation. Beginning as a grain buyer and shipper, they branched out and Peter Gardiner remarked the other day that, had Balfour's Scottish partners not yearned to return to their homeland "and build castles in the Highlands," Balfour Guthrie Ltd. might have been the most powerful conglomerate in the Golden State. They had the first big oil wells in the San Joaquin Valley, were in banking, insurance, ranching, minerals, shipping and a score of other key sectors of the California economy. They typically sold out to others who made huge industries of the enterprises that Balfour had in effect venture-capitalized. Shell, for instance, bought its Kern County oil wells. Peter Gardiner has dismantled some of Balfour's old specialties-sold the grain business a while ago because "there's no way to compete with Cargills in California." He's kept a steel importing business that pays well. Hapag-Lloyd, the German steamship line, acquired Balfour Marine, the shipping agency business that was almost its original activity.

The investment by a huge and acutely profit-conscious conglomerate-Dalgety claims to be the world's No. 1 agricultural corporation—in the United States and particularly in California, is undoubtedly a vote of extreme confidence. It should supply a corrective for those who assume that the Golden State is on the downgrade. Buying with depreciated dollars at the key moment, this huge conglomerate has suddenly become one of the major economic forces in our state.

A HARD LOOK/THE REAL OWNERS OF CALIFORNIA'S LAND

(By Carl Irving)

After decades of widespread public contentment over California's natural blessings, a flurry of issues has prompted a new scrutiny into who really owns the land.

The basic facts are these: The federal government owns the deserts and mountains and more, about half of California. Most of the rest is privately owned, mostly by large corporations.

But because of a growing population, environmental concerns and economic pressures, stewardship as well as ownership of the land has become more important.

Public attention lately has focused on a tight housing market, arguments over water rights, reports of foreign purchases and government decisions about which lands to exploit and which to conserve.

Involved are preservation of the American system that depends on profit from development and growing concern about what will be left for future generations. Those forces raise similar questions about land in other parts of the nation, but California tends to have more government land—about two acres per resident— and more large corporate buildings.

Government ownership reflects California's special history. The land was remote, and the special need for a railroad to link it with the rest of the nationthe gold, the rich farmlands, the inhospitable mountains and deserts-produced ownership patterns different from those in the Midwest and East.

Today, the federal government owns about 46 percent of California. The state comes next, with only 2.5 percent, followed closely by Southern Pacific railroad with about 2.4 percent. After that, the larger land owners include city governments with .9 percent and counties and special districts with about .75 percent each.

Then come large corporate ranchers and holders of forest lands, some with tracts exceeding several hundred thousand acres. Unlike Indians in other states, California's possess very little land. Yet only a century and a half ago, Indians and a few fur traders lived and roamed freely through California without restrictive deeds or other legal tracts defining rights to property.

Only a few Spaniards had been granted land in California before 1821, when Mexico gained its independence. In the next 46 years, while California remained Mexican, about 800 land grants were issued to rancheros.

With the establishment of the Bear Republic in 1846, the Anglos began to take over, and grants turned into farms with sharply drawn boundaries. But they were vast in scale.

In the 19th century, rancher Henry Miller claimed to own or control enough land to ride a horse from Mexico to Oregon without having to spend a night on anyone else's property.

When the early settlers arrived, they bypassed or turned away from the deserts and mountains, leaving them unclaimed.

That left nearly half of California as “public land," which the federal agencies absorbed as time went by. Today, the U.S. Forest Service holds about 20 million acres, the Bureau of Land Management 16 million, the National Park Service 4 million; the military 3 million and other federal agencies about 3 million.

Forest service lands include the treeless ranges that form a semi-circle around Los Angeles and end on the southern side of Monterey. They also include the forests that cover much of the Sierra and beyond, from near Bakersfield to Modoc in the northeast, and they stretch west to the richest forests in California, adjoining the northwest coast.

Like the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management evolved to watch over lands that nobody wanted in earlier days. But the BLM, unlike the Forest Service, ended up with what was considered "wasteland" until relatively recently-desert country in southeastern California.

The BLM has jurisdiction over other, smaller segments of California north through the Owens Valley, on the western slopes of the Sierra, in the northeast and west of Redding.

The most valuable BLM lands in California lie near Ukiah, where geologists say the world's largest known source of geothermal steam fills vast underground caverns. Last year, revenue from the sale of steam provided BLM with about

$20 million in revenue, of which half went back to Washington and the remainder was distributed among local governments.

The Forest Service netted $153 million from California lands last year, mostly from loggers. Three-fourths of the revenue-$115 million-went to Washington. The rest was split among counties, districts and cities near the logged areas. Except for water-covered areas within and up to one mile off shore, which the state says it holds in trust, California ownership-2.5 million acres-becomes almost insignificant beside those Federal holdings.

The California counties possess 758,000 acres, the cities 921,000, school districts 7,000 and special districts 743,000.

With 450,000 acres, the California Indians probably rank next, about 200,000 of them dividing up the reservations, ranches and other holdings, according to figures from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Their ancestors lost most of their historic tribal lands after the Civil War, when federal agents signed 18 treaties with them requiring them to settle in smaller preserves in less desirable locations. The U.S. Senate failed to ratify any of the treaties, however, and most of the Indians found themselves homeless. Gradually, some lands were set aside for the Indians. The government sought to settle the problem between 1956 and 1973 by paying each California Indian an average of $800, equal to 47 cents an acre, according to Steve Rios, Gov. Brown's adviser on Indian affairs.

The settlement, which totaled $29 million, involved 65 million acres. That left the Indians with about .45 percent of California.

Among California's more prosperous land owners today are corporations that hold some of the richest farmlands and forests in the world.

Agriculture is the state's biggest business, and most of the cash return comes from 8 million acres of irrigated lands stretching from the Imperial Valley on the border with Mexico north through the Salinas, San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys.

California has 63,000 farms, with an average size of 571 acres, but a few corporations hold vast tracts. Exact figures are hard to determine.

"We really have no idea at all" said Phillip Leveen, agricultural economist at UC-Berkeley. "There's no law that says you have to state who you are, and when you buy land, or whom you represent."

Reports circulated last year about massive farmland purchases by nonresident aliens, some who were said to be hiding behind shadow corporations. Some farm brokers speculated that they were buying up to 40 percent of the farmlands in the central valleys.

Some facts that have been established about California farmland: its 36 million acres produce 200 separate crops, including 40 percent of the nation's fresh fruits and vegetables and 25 percent of its total food supply, according to a study by Anne Jackson published in "Cry California."

Jackson also said that between 1940 and 1974, the number of farms shrank by almost half, from 132,000 to 68,000, although the amount of farm land increased by 3 million acres.

Who are the large landholders? A Ralph Nader task force listed, after SP, the Shasta Forest Co., 480,000 acres ; Tenneco, 363,000; Tejon Ranch, 348,000; Standard Oil 306,000; followed by Boise Cascade, Georgia Pacific, PG&E, Occidental Petroleum and Sunkist.

The totals have been challenged. Critics say they are inaccurate and based on guesswork. George Ballis, director of National Land for People in Fresno, maintains that it is impossible to list, in accurate order, the biggest private holders of land in California.

Companies such as J. G. Boswell and Newhall Land possess huge tracts of farmland and forest, but diligent digging has failed to come up with reliable figures, he maintains.

Southern Pacific makes no secret about its holdings. It is by far the largest private holder of property in California, most of which it inherited from its predecessor, the Central Pacific, which had obtained numerous grants from the federal government while building a railroad east from Sacramento in 1862 and other lines in later years.

SP estimates that about 450,000 of its acreage is in productive forest areas, 160.000 is in agriculture, and 84,000 is used for the railroad operations.

There's no secret, either, about the value of prime farmland. In the San Joaquin, it has gone up from about $1,000 an acre a decade ago to as much as $1,800 today.

An acre of land with a healthy crop of Thompson grapes sells for $10,000; five years ago, the same acre brought $4,000.

Urban land values also have risen steeply in recent years. Coldwell Banker, a large real estate firm, says that about 3 percent of California has become "urban." The process accelerated after World War II.

Since 1947, according to Cry California, almost 4.5 million acres of California's most productive cropland has been lost to urban sprawl.

The increases in costs of housing have been well publicized in the Bay Area: Today the average house is worth more than $50,000, according to a study by the Bank of America.

Over the past five years, rents at shopping centers have nearly doubled, and that has had obvious effects on property values.

The cost for office space in prime areas of downtown San Francisco has risen to $250 a square foot. That computes to $10 million an acre. In 1970, the price ranged between $125 and $150, or $5.5 million an acre.

The cost of land affects nearly everyone. The California Real Estate Association estimates that more than 60 percent of "households" in California-that includes single adults-own or pay mortgages on the homes in which they live. And, of course, rents reflect land costs.

Question No. 3. You have apparently seen many farm families forced off of the land in your community. How big a part has corporate pressure played? Is it the most important factor in the Firebaugh area in forcing people off of the land?

Answer. The corporate pressure is responsible for depressing prices, making markets unavailable, and paying excessive rental prices. It is also inflating land values beyond the ability of land to service debt load and pay for itself and provide a living for the family. It is the single most important factor in the disappearance of the independent family farmer in this area.

Question No. 4. You say you farm close to a huge corporate operation. Do you see evidence of abuses to the land and environment?

Answer. The corporate management practices completely wipe out all natural habitat for wildlife and void the land of trees and water courses for the enjoyment of people.

Question No. 5. There is much evidence of the decaying effect the corporate farm has on the independent businesses of a town. Have you noted a decaying business environment in your community linked to the growth of corporate farming?

Answer. The small businesses of Firebaugh and many surrounding communities have been disappearing at a rate only comparable to the small farmer. It is just short of a complete disaster. In this time of energy crisis we are faced with prospects of having to drive 40-50 miles to buy our supplies from the chain stores and large dealerships that are only in the major cities such as Fresno and Madera. The small local businessman is fast becoming an extinct species.