FOOD AND DEFENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 7, 8 July 1938, Page 8

FOOD AND DEFENCE

Not only in New Zealand must the farmer vote be considered by the Government of the day. In Britain also the home farmer must considered when a Government approaches the importation question from either of the two main angles: (1) the economic policy of the country, and (2) the country's military salvation. It happens that, when Mr. Chamberlain met the British farmers' challenge this week, he had. a case which is very hard to^answ^ry' If the home farmer calls for the country's safety in war-time, the Prime Minister points to a big pioneer effort by the Government in the way of food storage, covering big secret purchases of wheat, sugar, and whale oil. If the home farmer, Using the military argument, tries to push his case farther by asking that.more wheat be grown by himself, the answer offered is that there are limitations, not only to the advisability but to the possibility of British wheat-growing.

It is estimated that it has cost an extra £7,000,000 per year to increase home supplies of wheat from 16'per cent, to 24 per cent, of annual consumption, and that, Jin the present state of agricultural science, it is impossible to raise the proportion above 30 per cent, at any cost. .

This statement is quoted from an article by Dr. ; Walker, Lecturer in Economics, Sydney University, written for Australian readers, who are more interested in wheat export tnan tyew Zealand is. Dr. Walker also examines British home production in other commodities that are important in economics and vital in war-time.

Such, limitations,, of / aggregate British production as are apparent in wheat-growing appear also in other branches of farming. ■'■ Meat, which is a New Zealand export, does not appear in the cabled statement concerning storage; it is a food in which Britain consumes a greater percentage of her home production. According to Dr. Walker, Britain produces about a quarter of her wheat consumption, and half her meat consumption. But

she can only do so by importing fodder. It is, therefore, out of the question for Britain to become self-sufficient in foodstuffs. As compared with 1914, the situation is complicated by the fact that Britain's population has grown by 4,000,000 in the meantime, and that her mercantile marine is smaller today.

The Prime Minister's originally reported statement that Britain cannot grow all her own foodstuffs—a statement which, it seems, brought to him the agricultural deputation cabled yesterday—would appear to be the essence of moderation; he might have added that a portion of the British farm production today is Government-aided production justifiable less by economics than by the military argument. If planned production is applicable to agriculture, as President Roosevelt and Mr. Wallace believe, Britain has defence needs to consider that the Americans hardly worry about. A planned production that has to regard all the points of military strategy, as well as the economics of British and British Empire productiveness, is a constantly changing problem. It is to be hoped that Mr. Chamberlain has reassured British farmers that they are one cog—and not the hardest treated cog-1-in a machine of vast complexity.