FOOD RESOURCES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 38, 14 February 1945, Page 6

FOOD RESOURCES

WORLD DISTRIBUTION

THE NEED TO ORGANISE

The opinion that future distribution of world food resources would be inter-governmental and that it was the task of primary producers to organise so as to influence intergovernmental machinery for the good of mankind, was expressed by Mr. James Turner, leader of the United ! Kingdom Farmers' Delegation, which recently visited New Zealand, when addressing a conference of representatives of the National Farmers' Union of Great Britain and representatives of primary producers of Australia and New Zealand held in Sydney on Friday. Mr. Turner said that Britain's foreign exchange position demanded minimum expenditure abroad and maximum expansion of export trade. The extent to which production from, home agriculture could, and would, be Supplemented by food from overseas was dependent on the purchasing powev consequent upon the full productive employment of the industrial population. If full productive employment were achieved, the increased demand for primary products might mean that in spite of expansion of British agriculture production, purchases of primary produce from overseas would be even greater than that in the uncertain pre-war period. Mr. Turner contended that the ideal post-war solution did not lie permanently in restrictive measures on production, but rather in the more orderly distribution of the world's food resources, first to dissipate hunger and then to achieve freedom from want and better nutrition the world over. As the largest single importer of primary produce before the war, and as the .major producing country, Britain would become the focal point for world planning of the distribution of primary products. As United Kingdom farmers they could read into their own national position a sense of some security in that the foreign exchange position would dictate that a policy for British agriculture necessitated by economic circumstances would safeguard their home industry for some time. The conference requested that the National Farmers' Unions of the United Kingdom convene an international conference of primary producers' organisations and prepare a draft, constitution for an international federation for early submission. ■--?«■'. *. . . ........