WHEN WAR ENDS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3110, 24 April 1942, Page 3

WHEN WAR ENDS

RE-STOCKING EUROPE

BRITAIN’S BIG PROBLEM

CATTLE, SHEEP, PIGS, POULTRY

(From an Agricultural Correspondent)

On the day when the last Nazi soldier is driven out of reconquered Europe, what will be the most urgent need of the peoples left behind? There is not much doubt about the answer to that question. It’s food. As the Germans fall back on their own borders, they will leave behind them a trail of devastation beside which the Russian “ scorched earth” policy will seem mild. The first problem for the armies of liberation will be to feed the millions of Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen, Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavs and others left in areas where transport, industry and agriculture have come to a standstill. But the swift dispatch of supplies of foodstuffs can only be a stop-gap. Before these people can take up their normal lives again they must be given the means of producing their own food. Whatever season of the year it is when victory comes, the cycle of agriculture must be started again, so that the mill wheels may grind corn once more, the milking herds fill the household jugs, the vegetables appear again in the greengrocers’ shops. How these immense tasks are to be carried out is one of the problems now being worked out in London. What Will Be Needed What conditions are likely to be met with on Europe’s farms and small holdings when the Nazis have been driven out?

First, it is important to remember that in Western Europe, at any rate, there is not sufficient land for the inhabitants to produce both their own broad and all the fodder for their livestock. One can safely prophesy, therefore, that by the end of the war there will have been a severe reduction in the livestock population of such countries as Denmark and Holland, where in normal times cattle, pigs and poultry are maintained in numbers possibly only by the importation of animal feeding stuffs from overseas.

In the last war the Allied blockade let through to countries around Germany only sufficient feeding stuffs to maintain a livestock population adequate to the country’s own needs. As soon as any one of them showed signs of using this material to export food to Germany the supplies were slowed down. Compared with to-day’s total

blockade, this was comparatively liberal treatment but, even so, Denmark, to take an example, had to reduce its pig population by 75 per cent and its poultry by 40 per cent. We must expect much more drastic reductions in this war. We know, in fact, from various sources, that a considerable proportion of the livestock in these countries has already been slaughtered, either by order of their Nazi masters or through reduced supplies of feeding stuffs. Europe Depends On Livestock Another aspect to be considered is the extent to which European populations depend on livestock not only for their food but for their means of livelihood. Farms in Europe tend to be small, mostly between 25 and 125 acres, and land is much clearer even than in Britain, where land values sometimes astonish farmers from overseas. For example, while the average pre-war value of land in England and Wales was about £2l, in France it was £25, in Denmark £3O, in Germany £35, in Belgium and Holland £BO. Moreover, the number of people dependent for their living on these farms is proportionately greater than in Britain and the Dominions. When essential needs, such as seeds, fertilisers and agricultural implements, have been supplied where they are lacking, the keystone of agricultural reconstruction in Europe will be livestock. Where is Europe to get this livestock? The best British animals, the pedigree herds carefully bred for high production over the last 150 years, cannot be matched anywhere in the world, as is proved by the constant flow of British breeding stock to overseas countries, which even a great war cannot completely stop. British Breeding Stock One of the greatest qualities of British pedigree stock stock is its adaptability; it adjusts itself to conditions ranging from the Arctic to the tropics, and imparts qualities to its progeny which cannot be secured without this constant infusion of British blood. Probably because of Britain’s extreme ly diverse climate conditions and soil, the country’s livestock shows a wide range of type. There are, for instance, no fewer than 33 recognised pure breeds of sheep, 25 of cattle, 12 of pigs and 20 of horses. Most of these breeds hold their own in commercial farming, and all but a few are in constant demand for freshening the qualities of overseas herds. Some of them, deriving from or related to Continental breeds, will ,be just what is required to re-stock the herds across the Channel. In horses, for example, the Percherons exported from France since the last war and

now extensively bred in Britain, the United States and Canada, will be

1 eagerly sought by French farmers who, from one cause oi’ another, have lost their working animals. The British Friesian breed of cattle, with its gigantic output of milk —over 14 cows of this breed have topped the 3000-gallon mark —is a near relative and descendant of the black and white animals kept all along the North Sea coast of Holland and Germany. As recently as 1936, a fresh importation of Netherlands blood was made. In pigs, a great deal of the grading-up stock for such bacon-exporting countries as Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Russia has been taken from the United Kingdom, the Large White or Yorkshire breed being especially popular. Founded entirely on purchases from England and Scotland, Belgium has built up a thriving Large White Herd Book Society in a very few years. On the average, about 300 specimens of this breed are exported from Britain every year to all parts of the world.