BRITISH MINISTER SEES END OF WORLD CRISIS CAUSED BY FOOD AND DOLLAR SHORTAGES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23154, 17 January 1950, Page 5

BRITISH MINISTER SEES END OF WORLD CRISIS CAUSED BY FOOD AND DOLLAR SHORTAGES

Discussing ration increases* achieved in the last two years, Mr Strachey said: "I ask my colleagues whether we of the Labour Government are yet quite putting over to the country the extent of the improvements. I think that it is very important that we should do so in the next few weeks.

“The world food shortage has been overcome by a very positive policy designed to stimulate and increase world food production in every possible way. Our main instrument for that, purpose has' been bulk buying and the long-term contract. "We have 45 of these arrangements in operation all over the world. They have done more than any other single factor to give overseas producers the necessary confidence to expand their production. “Bv far the largest and most important of the bulk-buying and long-

term contract arrangements are made with our own farmers, to which we have given, under the guaranteed-price arrangements, what are in effect longterm contracts and bulk-buying arrangements for every one of their staple crops.” Mr. Strachey said that because of the improved nutrition of the people the ordinary British family had had just about the best Christmas in living memory.

(N.Z.P. A.—Reutor—Copyright.)

(10.30 a.m.) LONDON, Jan. 16. The world crisis caused by food ajid dollar shortages had passed, the Minister of Food, Mr. J, Strachey, told members of the Fabian Society today. He said that the official assessment of Britain’s nutritional position during the last six months of 1949 showed broadly that, for the first time since the war, the level of nutrition of British people, as judged by the three most significant indices —calories, proteins and fats—had passed the pre-war level.