Europes Low Cereal Ration Will Be Lower

Northern Advocate, 27 September 1947, Page 4

Europes Low Cereal Ration Will Be Lower

(Received 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, September 26. THE available grain from the current season’s crops would not be sufficient to maintain even the present low cereal ration in Europe.

The chairman of the Food and Agricultural Organisation’s Committee on Nutrition (Lord Horder) said this on his return to London from the FAO conference at Geneva.

Many people in Europe had already suffered from under-nourishment for years, he said. They needed 38,000,000 metric tons to maintain present rations, but only 29,000,000 tons, at the most, would be available from producing countries. Extraordinary new efforts were necessary.

FAO was hindered in its work because Argentina and Russia were not members.

Every French farmer with suitable land must sow wheat next year and arable land used for pasture will be taxed, says a Paris message. The French’Cabinet made these decisions today in approving the plan of the Minister of Agriculture (M. Tanguy Prigent) to overcome France’s acute bread grain shortage. The plan provides for a special tax Of £8 per acre for arable land not sown in grain wheat. Sowing must at least equal the average of the years 1937, 1938 and 1939.

This is expected to produce a 12,000,000-acre crop of rye. Sowings must be at least 125 per cent of the average areas sown in 1944, 1945 and 1946.