SUPPLIES OF FOODSTUFFS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 34, 9 August 1933, Page 6

SUPPLIES OF FOODSTUFFS

]ji our correspondence columns yesterday a writer, "Humanity," asked a question which has probably puzzled many people: Why should necessary foodstuffs be wasted or even destroyed when people are in want? The correspondent suggested that the Government should forbid such waste and agree to purchase surplus foods lor distribution lo the poor and needy. The problem is, unfortunately, not so readily solved. In the first place much of the destruction is not wanton, that is/to say it is not clone ■with the idea of maintaining prices, but because prices: are so low that marketing actually does not pay expenses. For example, apples may be left to rot in an orchard because the price that they would bring inj a city fruir-shop would riot pay tho wages of pickers, packers, and transport. Even carcasses of meat have been shipped tb England and \ the shipper has found that the charges were more than the. meat was. sold for. We do not say that such condition's should be accepted; but in seeking to alter them there are many factors other than the cost of apples on the tree or of a sheep on the farm that must be reckoned. Another difficulty in Government purchase of surpluses is to decide what is the surplus. A grower may claim, for example, if he cannot sell all his strawberries at, say, sixpence a pifnnet that he has a surplus which the Government should, buy;, whereas if he accepted fourpence -the whole crop would be "marketed;, Without difficulty. The New?* Zealand Government has inadcsoirie small ventures in the purchase :aiidi; distribution of meat for the unemployed; but if it were to go thoroughly into the business it would have to determine what was the capacity of the normal market, what the fair price for the output, and who should have the surplus. Such intervention might secure cheaper supplies for the j needy, but it would probably, raise the cost to the average private purchaser. The whole question is far [more complicated than casual examination of it would indicate.