Food shortage

The food shortage on Animal Farm first became acute in the winter following the destruction of the windmill. In January, the corn ration was drastically reduced, and the promised extra potato ration proved worthless when the potato crop was found to have been almost entirely destroyed by frost, leaving only a few edible tubers. For days at a time, the animals had nothing to eat but chaff and mangels; starvation seemed to stare them in the face.

Napoleon, aware that the truth about the food situation would encourage the hostile human neighbours, took measures to conceal the shortage. He instructed a few selected animals, mostly sheep, to remark casually in the hearing of Mr. Whymper, the solicitor who acted as intermediary with the outside world, that rations had been increased. More elaborately, he ordered the nearly empty bins in the store-shed to be filled nearly to the brim with sand, which was then covered with what remained of grain and meal. When Whymper was led through on a pretext, he was deceived and continued to report that there was no food shortage on Animal Farm.

The following winter was even harder. Food was shorter than ever, and once again all rations were reduced—except those of the pigs and the dogs. Squealer, the pigs' chief propagandist, explained that a too rigid equality in rations would be contrary to the principles of Animalism, and he always referred to the reduction as a 'readjustment.' Reading out elaborate statistics, he proved to the animals that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than in Jones's day, that they worked shorter hours, and that their drinking water was of better quality. The animals, their memories of the old days fading, believed every word.

Over the years, the pattern held. The farm grew richer—it acquired a threshing machine, a hay elevator, and new buildings, and the windmill was finally completed—but the animals themselves did not grow any richer. Only the pigs and the dogs thrived. Squealer explained that the pigs had to expend enormous labours on mysterious paperwork—files, reports, minutes, memoranda—that was burned after being covered with writing, but still neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour. On Sunday mornings, Squealer would read out lists of figures proving that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred, three hundred, or five hundred per cent, yet the animals often felt they worked longer hours and fed no better than in Jones's day.