PRODUCTIVE LANDS MUST SHAREFOOD: WAY TO AVERT WAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1947, Page 3

PRODUCTIVE LANDS MUST SHAREFOOD: WAY TO AVERT WAR

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, August 11. “The responsibility is _ all the world’s to use the land to its maximum,” said the Minister of Finance (Mr Nash) in an address to the United Nations Association this evening. “Accepting that responsibility, we must see that value from the land goes to other countries that need it or let them come and get it. If we don’t let them come, they will in the long run.” , Mr Nash said that a country s excess production, which would lower the value of products if placed on the market, should be sent to a country badly needing it at any price offering. This would increase the productivity of the country receiving it. It would eventually be paid for and the country selling it, by getting rid of a burdensome surplus, would benefit as well as the country receiving it.

Mr Nash said it was essential for those with plenty of food to share it with those who had not. . The only way to avert war was by giving people enough to eat. Proper distribution should ensure this. “Never Enough” “Many people have never had enough to eat,” said Mr Nash. “Before the war 30 per cent, of the people in the United States did not have the full nutritional factors necessary to life.”

Mr Nash said food consumption in India had never been enough. The average number of years a person living in New Zealand, which had the highest food consumption in the world, could expect fo live -was 68. The average in India was 27. The infant mortality rate in India was very high, and if a baby survived for one year it could then expect to live only to about 30 years. The great majority of people living on rice lived on the edge of famine and, being badly fed, they could not devote energy for production to the maximum because they had not enough energy. He compared the size of farms in New Zealand and China. Two people on a New Zealand farm with Western equipment could do as much as 28 people in China. If modern farming equipment ftvas introduced in China, 26 people would be displaced on each farm of less than two acres and would be unemployed. China and Payment The Food and Agricultural Organisation had been trying to get over that major difficulty. Those 26 people should devote their energy to producing more clothing and other items which the people in New Zealand took for granted but which were short in China. China could not pay for farming equipment. Therefore, countries with equipment must send products without being paid for them. That was the only way the world could be saved. People living in Australia and New Zealand could not have others only two days’ journey away by air living on half as much food. “In New Zealand we cannot keep 104,000 square miles for one and a quarter million people when there are people in other parts of the world needing the.production from the land as much as we do,” said Mr Nash.