MORE MOUTHS TO FEED

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26745, 31 May 1952, Page 5

MORE MOUTHS TO FEED

POSITION OF COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES

The number of people in most of the Commonwealth countries has increased very rapidly since the years before the war. In Britain itself the population rose from 47,500,000 in 1938 to an estimated total of 50,600,000 in 1950, or by approximately six per cent., but this proportion was far outstripped by the increases of 21 per cent, in Canada, of 19 per cent, in Australia and New Zealand, of 23 per cent, in South Africa, of 31 per cent, in Ceylon, of 17 per cent, in the colonies, and of 50 per cent, in Southern Rhodesia. If the Commonwealth’s exports of food (of which the major part comes to this country) have failed to increase by as much as might have been expected in the last few years, the cause is readily understandable. All or nearly all of the great food-exporting countries of the Commonwealth have a growing number of mouths to feed at home. In these circumstances the future of

the United Kingdom's supplies of food must be uncertain. A higher standard of living must depend in the first place on better food supplies. Several Commonwealth countries are already net importers of food; and the less developed countries (a definition which includes India and Pakistan as well as all the colonies) still have far to go in feeding their own citizens before thinking of export surpluses of food other than such crops as sugar or cocoa. Since the populations are likely to continue to increase, the task of feeding them is likely to become more, rather than less, onerous and the British market must be ready to take second place. The land of Britain alone cannot hope to produce enough even of the basic foods to feed 50 million people, so that the future of British food supplies can be no better than doubtful in spite of the great achievements of ,the British agricultural industry.