WORLD’S FOOD NOT SHORT BUT NOT DISTRIBUTED

Grey River Argus, 11 October 1949, Page 5

WORLD’S FOOD NOT SHORT BUT NOT DISTRIBUTED

Report to U.N.0..

Conference (Rec. 5.30). NEW YORK, October 10. The breakdown in' the distribution of food, and not the shortage of food, was responsible for hunger in many parts of the world, so the Deputy Director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Sir Herbert Broadley, said to-day, when addressing a food distribution conference at Boston.

He referred to a report in 1946 wherein the F.A.O. had estimated that the world would need over sixty' million tons of cereal, thirty' million tons of meat, and thirty-live million extra gallons of milk in the year 1960.

He continued: “But what is the use of even dreaming of these figures when the wheat acreage in the United States will have to be cut 15 per cent, in 1950. Similar measures are already being planned for other foods”.

Sir H. Broadley said that the trouble was that the distribution of food had broken down. Markets could not be found for even the amount of food which the farmers in the major export surplus areas were now able to produce. He said that President Truman’s programme of technical assistance for economic development, followed by a large and continuingcapital investment, was undoubtedly the remedy, standing out beyond all others, for the solving of the current problem. Sir H. Broadley added that one aid on the distribution problem would be the establishment of an international commodity clearing house, as already proposed by the F.A.0., to ensure that the surplus foods could be sold to other countries, either in blocked currency or in convertible currency.