MEATLESS DAYS should not be seen as a panacea for the world's food problems. Even if every American turned vegetarian tomorrow, there is no reason to believe that the extra grain made available would reach the people who need it most. Before that can happen, there must be a fundamental change in the theory and practice of food aid programs, both in the United States and in other rich countries. And judging by Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz's performance at the World Food Conference in Rome two weeks ago, that change may be a long way off.

Butz spent most of his time defending the existing United States food policy, boasting that no other country could rival this one in its generosity to hungry nations. He thus dashed the feeble hopes raised by Henry Kissinger, who, in his keynote address, made a startling departure from past U.S. policy by suggesting that food should be distributed according to need rather than market demand and by proposing that an international agreement be reached on each nation's responsibilities for maintaining food reserves. Butz followed Kissinger's vague remarks by lecturing the delegates on the virtues of the free enterprise system; calling on nations to pursue their own stockpile policies and hold their own reserves independently; and refusing to make any specific commitment of future U.S. food aid.

Butz's refusal was predictable. The American government has traditionally directed its aid program not towards the people it's ostensibly designed to help but towards holding back political change in developing countries. This is a goal that by itself would make nonsense of even a sincere aid program. China has shown that the changes the United States opposes can mean leaping toward economic self-sufficiency. And the defoliation and destruction of agriculture the United States has visited on Indochina makes a mockery of its supposed commitment to feeding people, just as its reluctance to feed them in the short term does.

Even the food aid programs the United States has implemented in the past have not done a particularly good job of feeding starving people. One of Butz's boasts at the conference was that "last year when there was no grain surplus we programmed $67 million worth of food under Public Law 480." What Butz did not mention was that 43 per cent of the 1974 deliveries under P.L. 480--otherwise known somewhat euphemistically as the Food for Peace program--went to only two countries, South Vietnam and Cambodia, where much of the money was used for military purposes. He also did not mention that the program was used to export massive amounts of tobacco, at the insistence of congressmen from tobacco-producing states.

Butz should resign--although if rumors that Ford is preparing for Butz's dismissal are true his resignation may not even be necessary. Ford will have to contend with a constituency that remains fiercely loyal to Butz--the farmers, a group whose interests he has served diligently. Certainly, the Secretary of Agriculture should not ignore the interests of American farmers, but he should not serve them to the detriment of farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America. American agricultural policies must begin to take the rest of the world into account. One of the Norwegian delegates in Rome suggested that Kissinger, Butz and other key ministers should be locked up in a room without food for ten days and then be allowed to make food policies. It certainly wouldn't hurt.