EUROPE’S FOOD SUPPLIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 August 1940, Page 8

EUROPE’S FOOD SUPPLIES

NO NEED FOR STARVATION GERMAN GRAIN STOCKS [BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.] RUGBY, August 18. The question of the food situation >n Europe during the coming Winter and the possibility of widespread starvation, has provoked ‘much speculation in Britain, the United States, and other parts of the world, not excluding Germany. The whole question is ably reviewed in the current issue of the “Economist.” This journal states: “First may it be said, that there need be no .star-vation,-even in a Europe cut off from overseas supplies. On a three-year average from 1936 to 1938, the Continent was entirely self-sufficient m potatoes, and virtually so in rye, barley, oats, beans, and sugar. Against the production figure of some 42,000,000 tons of wheat, 19,000,000 tons of maize, and 1,000,000 tons of rice, the import figures were about 3,000,000 tons of rice. “Uniformly bad harvests due to the hard Winter, the calling up of agricultural labourers to the colours, and the actual destruction of warfare will have increased Europe’s dependence on outside supplies, but there are large reserves to draw on. Livestock can be killed off, and tinned foods and Germany’s own stocks can be consumed. The Nazi leaders boast that they have more than 7,000,000 tons of grain stored away in the Reich, a figure which all but covers Europe’s normal deficit, and although the peoples of the Continent must inevitably go short of tropical foods and certain luxuries and suffer from a deficiency of fats, the forecast of starving is not warranted by the actual quantities of food likely to be available. The problem in short is one of distribution and not of actual supply. “It has long been one of the mam points of the Nazi propaganda that her food position was perfectly assured and the British blockade thoroughly broken, yet there is evidence of a severe, shortage in Ger-man-occupied countries. .Stringent rationing was already /in-force in Holland, which, for example, lost to Germany 90 per cent, of her butter reserves in one week, in Belgium and Denmark whose pigs and poultry are being compulsorily slaughtered and dispatched to Germany. Further rationing is about to be introduced in unoccupied France.” The “Economist” states that although the British blockade is far from broken, it yet cannot be held responsible for any food shortage in Europe. Before the occupation of Norway > and the Low Countries, the British blockade, which had been then in operation for more than six months, had in no way interfered with the flow of foodstuffs into these countries. The food shortage arose there when they fell under German control. Where neutrality was still operative the blockade did not interfere with supplies of food. “Clearly, therefore,” the Economist” continues, “it is no action of ours, but rather Germany’s violation of these various States’ neutrality which led to the present situation. The Nazis must take full moral responsibility for cutting off the peoples they conquered from sources of world supply, and at the same time they must fulfil the obligation, fully recognised in international law, of securing the well-being of the territories they occupied.”