BRITISH FOOD SUPPLIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18021, 21 February 1922, Page 6

BRITISH FOOD SUPPLIES.

The impressive figures which the Prime Minister has quoted to show the important position New Zealand holds as a supplier of the British meat market deserve wide publicity. They have a specially important bearing at a time when British financial policy is undergoing a subtle change. Not only the Treasury, but private capitalists are beginning to realise that the development of the Dominions is a legitimate first charge against British capital. Evidence of this is afforded by the offer of the United Kingdom Government to assist in financing Empire migration and land settlement and by the, so far limited, preference it offers to Dominion loans which will create employment in Great Britain. Altogether apart from the Government's attitude, capitalists and financial institutions are showing a greater disposition to lend their money as far as possible for Empire development. There are very good reasons why they should do so. In the first place Britain is more than ever dependent on overseas food supplies. The spasmodic effort made during the war to increase the home production of food has spent itself and, to quote only one illustration, onehalf of the United Kingdom's meat supply is now imported, compared with a little over one-third ten years ago. It is good policy to lend money to the countries that send this meat. The point is well made in a recent issue of the Statist as follows :—

It is almost essential, if we are to maintain the economic position we have so long enjoyed in this island, that we should invest the capital whereby the raw materials needed for our food and manufactures are obtained. This will at once be evident to the reader, because by investing the capital we obtain supplies on a very much lower basis of economic values than would be the case if the capital were found by foreigners. In the nature of the case, in order to obtain supplies from a foreign country financed from a foreign source we should havo to find some means or other of paying for those products. But if we ourselves invested the capital we should obtain those supplies in the natural course of interest upon our investments.

That is a very sound general argument, but it is disappointing to find it used in advocacy of a scheme for developing Peru with British capital in order to open up the rich interior beyond the Andes for food production. The economic argument is unexceptionable, but the war should have taught British economists the danger of relying upon foreign food supplies. The South American countries showed the British Government little mercy when it came to fixing a price for meat for tho troops; it was to Australia and New Zealand the Government turned to make reasonable contracts. If there is a case for lending money to foreign foodproducing countries there is a far stronger case for giving preference to the Dominions, which are capable of producing practically all the food the United Kingdom requires and guaranteeing supplies which will not be subject to interruption or conscienceless higgling in war-time.