WORLD PRODUCTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 12332, 22 April 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

WORLD PRODUCTS

Where did your breakfast-table drinks come from? The grocer. Right up to a point, but not correct enough to satisfy the Imperial Economic Committee, says a writer in an English paper. The committee has been investigating the sources of tea, coffee and cocoa, after-breakfast pipe or cigarette, and the rubber tyres that carry one to work. It was found out that the UiU. has the world’s sweetest tooth, with the United Kingdom a bad second. Uncle Sam not only grows 1,619,000 tons of sugar at home, but imports 4,148,000 tons. Britain grows only 472,000 tons—which has to be watered with subsidies to bring it out of the soil—and imports 1,973,000 tons. All the Empire countries together produce 4,719,000 tons of the world's cane-sugar production of 14,113.999 tons. With tea, however, Britain and the British Empire control the breakfas table—and the tea table, afternoon cup, and supper table too. Empire countries produce 6K* 000,000 pounds of tea a year, and the rest of the world only 2 8 3.99''000 pounds. The United Kingdom itself drinks 402,000,000 lb. The world’s leaf tobacco production totals 5,760,000,0001 b. of which Empire countries contribute 1,363000,0001 b. In rubber the British Empire ** sitting on top of the world’s wealthNearly 60 per cent of the worlds supplies come from the Empire. Balancing up. Empire countries fc 1935 imported 1,279.000 tons of sugar, 61,000 cwt of coffee and 225--000,0001 b of tobacco. They exported 6,000,0001 b of 343,000 tons of rubber, and 25(,9'-'-tons of cocoa.