(FORTUNE Magazine) – During most of this summer the present writer was allowing his desk, a monument to clutter on which the Manhattan telephone directory occasionally gets seriously lost, to be further chaoticized by a mound of papers mentally labeled the Orange File. When would the Orange File get to be used? That was the question. The answer is: now. The file was mercifully relevantized in the waning days of summer by Representative Leon E. Panetta (Dem.-Calif.), and the first thing needing to be said here is, thank you Leon. Like many another liberal Dem., Leon is a leading bleeder about hunger. The man is chairman of a House Agriculture Committee's subcommittee on nutrition, and in that role he frequently makes the papers arguing that hunger is a problem basically caused by conservatives. ''Hunger Is Growing, But Relief Isn't'' was the clunky title of an op-ed piece along these lines that he wrote for the New York Times a few weeks ago, while a September 13 news conference at which Panetta held forth additionally amplified the proposition that people are hungry because of Reaganite budget cuts.

This brings us to the Orange File. It contains many a fascinating fact. Did you know, for example, that one lonely orange happening to be 2 5/8 inches in diameter contains about 65 calories, more than enough vitamin C to handle Rambo's recommended daily allowance, and maybe half as much vitamin A as anybody could possibly crave even if hooked on screwdrivers? In the emerging debate on oranges, nobody really disputes the fact that they're extremely nutritious. And yet, out there on the great stage of politics, you can now observe a sizable number of actors whose lines require them to support the federal ''marketing orders'' that limit the production and control the distribution of oranges in ways that will maximize long-run orange prices and, therefore, make the aforesaid citrus less accessible to hungry people. By one of those wonderful coincidences that makes politics such fun in America, many of these actors are liberal Democrats and hunger crusaders, like Leon E. Panetta. Other prominent superliberal pols committed to the marketing orders include California Senator Alan Cranston and Representatives Ron Dellums (of Oakland) and Tony Coelho (of Merced). Their problem, of course, is that they all come from a state where oranges are a big factor. Numerous other Democratic liberals are from agricultural districts committed to marketing orders for other fruits, vegetables, and dairy products. The Reaganites also don't look too good on this front. For a while there in the early Eighties, there was some serious talk in the Administration of doing away with marketing orders in deference to free-market principles, but this has now subsided, and probably nobody at all would even be raising the subject except for an idealist named Carl A. Pescosolido. Carl grows oranges in Exeter, California, and has civilly disobeyed the laws requiring him to report his production; in addition, he has been threatening off and on for the past five years to sue the Agriculture Department on antitrust grounds. If he started talking about hunger, he could be invincible.