The Press WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1947. The World’s Food

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25207, 11 June 1947, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1947. The World’s Food

■ As a Washington message reported this week, Sir John Orr, F.A.O. Director-General, acting on a resolution of the International Emergency Food Council last month, has called a conference, for July 9, in Paris, to discuss the world’s shortage of i grains, and has asked all govern- ' ments concerned to send their food and agriculture Ministers. It was Mr Clinton Anderson, the United States Secretary of Agriculture, who particularly urged the council to call this conference, declaring that, without extraordinary precautions, the world would face a food shortage, a year from now, even more difficult than the present one. Since his department maintains an exceedingly efficient world crop survey, what he said would have been impressive without further authority than his own; but all other evidence available reinforced his, which set in their proper proportions the reports—quite accurate but by themselves misleading—of bumper crops in the United States, Canada, and Argentina. The hard fact is that, even if these three countries and Australia maximise their export surpluses, there will be a wide gap between world supply and world need before the 1948 harvests are garnered. To leave aside the connected facts about the rice and wheat and other grain crops of the East, it is the heavy lag of European production that explains this fact. It is not explained away by easy references to black market operations, in Germay, Italy, and France, for example. If every ton of grain produced reached the normal distributing channels, the shortage would still be dangerously great. Partly, it is due to such arbitrary dispositions of territory as have divided eastern Germany from the west; partly to mass movements of population, which have turned farmers into refugees; partly to shortages of transport, implements, fuel, and fertiliser; partly to the physical and the psychological condition of hundreds of thousands of producers. The figures are plain enough. European wheat production, last year, was 20 per cent, below the five-year pre-war average; rye, 32 per cent, below; oats, 23 per cent, below; barley, 16 per cent, below; and maize, 43 per cent, below. (Livestock figures were 10 per cent, below.) Unfortunately, Mr Anderson had little more to offer the International Emergency Food Council than a heavy caution against allowing “ in- “ digenously produced food supplies “ from the coming harvest to be dis- *' sipated ”, which means, of course, ration strictly and fairly and break the black market everywhere. This is not advice that can greatly stir the Government and people of Britain, for example. They can do no more than they have done and are doing, and have already been taught to look forward to little relief or none. But it is possible that, in July, Mr Anderson may be ready to say rather more. If the strong, constructive twist that Mr Acheson and General Marshall have lately given to the Truman doctrine is going to work out in a strong, constructive twist of active policy, agreement among European countries on proposals for economic recovery is likely to be backed by American aid; and preliminary proposals to restore agriculture should qualify for it. But something more than American support for European plans is required; the United States is just now a European Power actively engaged in administering a huge German area and a part of Austria. Anglo-American measures in the western zone have failed industrially and failed in regard to food supply; they can be vastly improved, and hope is now rising that they will be. The July conference will not meet to tell Britain and the United States what to do; i* can, however, be told what they mean to do and be assured, concretely, that it will be done. Example here has peculiar importance. But if the conference does not go far in planning greater production, it will have to rely on planning allocation from the few surplus countries. The hard question then must be, what the surplus countries can do to fill the gap without domestic rationing. It is too much to hope that Mr Anderson will be in a position to pledge the United States to that.