NATIONAL FOOD SUPPLY

Evening Star, Issue 22326, 30 April 1936, Page 9

NATIONAL FOOD SUPPLY

QUESTIONS IN HOUSE OF COtHOHS (British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright "rugby, April 29. (Received April 30, at noon.) Eood supplies, both in their health and defence aspects, were the subjects of the questions in the House of Commons to the Prime Minister. Mr Baldwin stated that the special committee under the chairmanship of the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, was now engaged on the reexamination of the whole question of food supply in emergency. Ho assured another member that the important question of nutrition was receiving due consideration in the review now in progress of the problem of food production and supplies. FOOD AND DEFENCE QUESTION OF ADEQUATE STORAGE. The most elaborate reorganisation of armament production (says ‘ The Times ’) will be useless if the workers cannot be supplied with food; and if it is essential, in the words of Mr Bruce, to “marry health and agriculture,”'it is equally essential to marry agriculture and defence. What is required to enable agriculture to commit this desirable political bigamy? Much has been done during the past few years to increase agricultural production, and the overall increase is 14 per cent. More specifically we have a sugar industry which is now producing 600,000 tons of sugar a year; the Wheat Act has increased the production of wheat to 1,800,000 tons; and tariffs have given a great impetus to production from market gardens. We are, or could be, self-supporting in the matter of potatoes, eggs, vegetables, and milk. But the people cannot live by these things alone, particularly if they had to make good a lack of other foods. What needs attention is the supply of meat and of cereals. As regards meat the production of British livestock could, no doubt, be increased. But from the point of view of defence there is the difficulty that a large annual crop of meat would be difficult to maintain in time .of war. Livestock, like men, live partly on imported food ; and their function is partly to turn one kind of food into another. Clearly, therefore, the problem of storage. The same is true of cereals, for the different reason that space is not available to grow all our requirements. It is pretended that the organisation of adequate storage would be a simple or an unimportant matter. There are, as Dr Burgin indicated in the House of Commons, large facilities already for the storage of grain, but something more comprehensive than the usual trading reserves is required. There would have to be large-scale purchases from the dominions, a continuous turning oyer of stocks, and therefore an organisation which, even if it did not direct, would have to be careful not to upset the course of prices.