BRITISH FOOD NEEDS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 210, 3 August 1940, Page 2

BRITISH FOOD NEEDS

SIR JOHN ORR’S PLAN. EFFECT ON DOMINIONS. A special correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald writes : What arc Great Britain’s wartime needs in the way of foodstuffs? If the advice of the Lnited Kingdom’s outstanding authority on food and nutrition, Sir John Orr, is accepted by the Imperial Government—and there is evidence to suggest that the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, has been largely- influenced by his ideas —then the programme ahead may contain some shocks for Australia. In his latest book, “Feeding the People in Wartime” —a copy of which has just come to hand—Sir John Orr lays down a series of principles which, to the practical Australian farmer, may seem revolutionary because they run contrary to what, for lack of expert guidance, our producers have regarded as basic essentials. For instance, because Great Britain’s peacetime supplies of bacon and eggs from the Lowlands and Denmark have been cut off by the invasion of' these countries, it seemed natural to assume that there would be a need for us to fill the breach, and the plans of individual farmers—Australia being still without an agricultural plan—are being developed along these lines. NATIONAL HEALTH. In this book, however, Sir John Orr points out that bacon has no particular ■lood value which cannot be supplied more economically in other ways, and that both bacon and eggs are- expensive and wasteful of shipping space compared with other foods. If this is so, then the need for enlightenment in' Australia is urgent, and the continued failure of the Government to give farmers a lead is worse than folly. Sir John Orr work 6 on the conviction that wartime food policy for Great Britain should be based on the requirements of national health, which must be improved by raising nutrition, especially among the working classes, to a new level—realising that, apart from the social aspects, any weakness on the home front caused by having onethird of the population underfed might prove os serious as if the lighting forces were ill-equipped. The most efficient way to feed the nation in wartime, Sir John Orr contends, would be to produce an increased volume of the bulky protective foods at home on the 4,000,000 acres of grassland which could bo brought under cultivation, thus giving a total supply sufficient to provide an average daily diet containing twothirds of ia. pint of milk, 6oz of vegetables, 2oz of oatmeal, and 16oz of potatoes. CALORY VALUES. This would be nearly up to the standard needed for good health, and a better diet than the poorest one-third of the people has at present. The necessary increase in production would be helped by the fact that nearly 5,000,000 families —half the families in England—will 60on have either a vegetable garden of their own or an allotment. To supplement these basic foods, it would be necessary to import energy foods from the Dominions and elsewhere, the selection of these being worked out on a scientific-cum-eco-nomic basis. That is to say, the main consideration must bo the energy-yield-ing value in thousands of calories per cubic foot of shipping space. On this basis the principal' foods are rated thus: —Butter, 143; fate and tallow, 118; sugar, 83; cheese, 56; bulk wheat, 56; dried fruits, 55; bacon, 39; frozen beef, 26; eggs in shell, 12. Although cheese and dried fruits come lower on the list than sugar, they have greater food value, and Sir John Orr recommends that they be given precedence. The shock for Australian producers is to see bacon, beef and eggs—all our surplus of which ha 6 been bought by the Imperial Govern-

ment up to the present —being placed low on the list of priority imports on the grounds that, in addition to being uneconomical of shipping space—a factor daily becoming more vital —they ar© relatively expensive. MILK AND VEGETABLES. Many striking arguments are presented by Sir John Orr for increasing the consumption of milk and vegetables by subsidising production, and making these essentials available at a price low enough to bring them within the range of even the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s “twelve millions who live constantly on the verge

of starvation.” It is argued that, by a ca6h-plus-bottle-and-carry milk policy, much of the milk which formerly was diverted for manufacturing could bo made available to poor consumers at about Is 3d a gallon. Sir John Orr, whose enthusiastic advocacy of better feeding to produce a contented people is so well-known, urges that this food policy should be planned to carry on in Britain for the duration of the war, and three years thereafter. The complete Government control of the wholesale distribution of foodstuffs, he says ; has produced economies, and permits the introduction of a new social attitude toward satisfying the food needs of the people, a reform that he hopes may be permanent. His plan has been worked out | largely on the assumption that the demand for shipping space must be reduced to a minimum, his policy providing for a reduction of import from 20,000,000 tons to 5,000,000 tone. It

would take time to bring it fully into operation but, being based on a'set of definite assumptions, it could be modified according to tlie amount of shipping actually available, and the degree of success—a degree that is alreadv high in getting the increased homo productioii.