’Food Prices Will Keep Up'

Northern Advocate, 15 March 1947, Page 2

’Food Prices Will Keep Up'

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. "1 am certain there is no reason to oelieve there will be any real slump in the prices of food or fats for many years ahead," said Lord Bledisloe, addressing the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand. The-cry of over-production was a false one. There had been not over-production, but gross under-consumption and maldistribution of food on a world scale in the past. If the United Nations policy was put into effect, the demand for foodstufis and fats would be maintained and a continuance of reasonable prices could be expected. Under such a policy there would certainly be no alternating booms and slumps. Since the war ended the British farming industry had lost its women workers. Further, more than a quarter of the farm workers in Britain recently had been German prisoners of war. INADEQUATE DIET Now the country would be faced with a more serious lack of labour than ever. The extreme Arctic weather of the last two months had made the situation still worse. The fear was. however, that, although the people were not going to be starved, their inadequate diet might impair their capacity to maintain the output of manufactured goods so essential to the solvency of Britain. No country had more adequately done its bit in the present time of trial than had New Zealand, but he hoped that in the next two difficult years the Dominion would be able to enter into still bigger contracts for food with the British Government.