SHORTAGE OF WHEAT

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33250, 13 June 1973, Page 21

SHORTAGE OF WHEAT

F.A.O. alarm expressed (N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) ROME, June 12. The Secretary-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (Mr Addeke Boerma) said yesterday that the wheat stocks expected at the end of the present crop year could not cover the lowest foreseeable world requirements. "There is cause for alarm.” he added. In addition, there was an expected shortage of two million tons of rice in the coming marketing season. In his address at the opening of the sixtieth session of the F.A.O. Council in Rome,! Mr Boerma emphasised that; the food and grain shortages I that now affected some areas ■could become world-wide. He > was alarmed about the situation in some places, especially the south-west Sahara land parts of South-East Asia, he said. He added that he had abandoned the hopeful outlook that he had expressed in February: his guarded optimism then about the world food situation had been based on hopes of bumper crops in the United States and Canada, but heavy spring flooding had wiped outi these hopes, just as it had! wiped out much of the! spring planting. | “This year, the United i States and Canada will have Ito dip into their reduced I stocks to feed their own citizens,” Mr Boerma said. “These stocks, already depleted by heavy grain sales to the Soviet Union, will reach their lowest point for 20 years.”