FOOD CONSUMPTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 307, 29 December 1931, Page 4

FOOD CONSUMPTION.

BRITISH FIGURES.

The decline in Britain's ability to sell goods as reflected not only in smaller imports of raw materials, but also in much smaller exports of manufactured goods. It might have been supposed that with, up till then, an unprecedented number of unemployed in the middle of an economic blizzard, there.would have been a greater consumption of bread and margarine and other cheap foods, and a. smaller consumption'^'the more expensive items of imported foods, compared with 1013, but wheat and margarine were smaller m 1930 than in 1913. On the other hand, imports of beef, butter, tea, and tobacco show big increases, as will be seen from the following table: — 1913. 1930. Wheat, cwt .... 105,878,102. 105,006,857 T>o(?f Chilled, cwt .. 5,248,004 9,092,701 Frozen, cwt .. 3,952,880 £'ooo'5o! Butter, cwt .... 4,139,028 6,8-8,4-7 Margarine, cwt . 1,518,297 546,090 SU Refined, cwt.. 18,450,597 Unrefined, cwt 20,934,293 Tea.- lb 365,043,404 541,443,145 Tobacco, lb .... 162,365,925 203,642,204 The figure for tobacco was entered for Home consumption. The increase in imports of fruit over the period was enormous. In 1913 imports of apples and oranges were 9,049,050cwt, and in 1930 16,386,832cwt, while imports of bananas rose from 7,539,984 to 14,991,410 bunches. This means that the purchasing power of the population was not smaller in 1930 than in 1913.