Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, JULY 3, 1936. BRITAIN’S FOOD SUPPLIES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 182, 3 July 1936, Page 8

Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, JULY 3, 1936. BRITAIN’S FOOD SUPPLIES.

The feeding of the people of the United .Kingdom snouid be, m reality, ail impossibility, but it is being accompiislied and that is tlie marvellous feature. Britain s lood comes from almost every cultivated country m the world. A cup of tea, with bread, butter and jam, includes tea troni Asia; wheat from Australia, Canada, South America, and England, all blended to make a baker’s hour; butter from Australia, New Zealand, or Denmark, or a blend containing some from Russia; fruit which might have come from anywhere ; and sugar from the VV est Indies, Cuba, Java, Natal, or Queensland, with a certain proportion of beet sugar grown in England. The milk is all produced in England, but the cows that yielded the milk have been fed on ’‘cakes” made from oil seed sent from Africa, Asia, South America, and Russia. The enormously wide range of supplies is so remarkably well organised that foodstuffs for man and beast come to hand with regularity. For the past fifty years the food consumption of the United Kingdom has been pretty well-known. Tlie most reliable statistics are contained in the Government publication, the Agricultural Output and Food Supplies of the United Kingdom (191'd), in which the supplies for the _ period 1909-13 were compared with those for the period 1924-28. Several striking facts come out of the comparisons. Between the two five-year periods, pre-war and post-war, there had been practically no change in the quantities of the three staple foods —bread, meat, and potatoes —consumed per head of population. The trend of the figures in a comparison with 1934 shows that the consumption of bread tends slowly to fall, and of meat slowly to rise; but the consumption of other foods—eggs, fruit, butter, cheese, vegetables—increases rapidly. The people in the United Kingdom are living on a much more varied diet than formerly, and this trend is likely to continue. As regards liquid milk and potatoes Britain is self supporting. Of meat the United Kingdom produces about 45 per cent., poultry and eggs about 5U per cent., and fruit about 44 per cent., but of wheat only about 15 per cent. Only about 10 per cent, of the population of the United Kingdom lives on the land. In most other countries the proportion of agricultural population is much higher, and the standard of living is much lower. The agricultural production in England and Wales, was valued at just over £200,000,000 for 1933-34, but it must be remembered that the retail price would probably •be about double that. Sir John Orr estimates the total food hill at retail prices at £1,075,000,000 per annum aud the home production is about 40 per cent, of the total. By far the largest part of

the home farmers’ contribution to food supplies is on tlie animal side. In 1934 the value on the farm of live stock products amounted to £139,000,000, farm crops to £30,000,000, fruit and vegetables to £25,000,000, and glasshouse produce to £7,000,000. The agricultural experts arc endeavouring to increase the proportion of food grown in Britain, for it is recognised that agriculture must play its part in the defence of the country.