FOOD SUPPLIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 269, 12 November 1943, Page 2

FOOD SUPPLIES

POST-WAR PROBLEMS PLANNING NEED STRESSED (0.C.) GISBORNE, this day. The part which New Zealand will be required to play in staving off a world-wide food shortage was referred to by Mr. J. R. Virtue, of Wellington, at the annual conference of the New Zealand Grain, Seed and Produce Merchants' Association in Gisborne. "Plans must be made to provide for the many problems and complexities that must arise in the years immediately following the successful termination of the war," Mr. Virtue said. "Problems are already confronting the United Nations in arranging for shipments of foodstuffs to 'alleviate starvation in those countries taken over by the Allies, and when we consider the vast destruction that has occurred in those lands where the full force of the Avar has been felt, it is not hard to visualise the magnitude of the task that faces agricultural countries such as New Zealand in the post-war years. There will be a world-wide food shortage. New Zealand will be called upon to expand to the limit of its primary production, and I include in this category seeds of all descriptions." Mr. Virtue gave a warning of the real danger which existed in the State control of commodities. What concerned traders was that the Government, in pursuing a polic3' of Socialisation, had attempted to take away rights to arrange production and to control the distribution of commodities, a practice which they had considered was their prex*Dgative.