THE NATION’S FOOD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22827, 11 March 1936, Page 3

THE NATION’S FOOD

DEFECTIVE DIETS SUBSIDIES AND CONTROL APPEAL FOR A BOLD POLICY, (From Oub Own Correspondentt (By Air Mail) - LONDON, February 8. Sir John Orr, director of the Imperial Bureau of Animal Nutrition, addressed a meeting: of the Farmers’ Club on the subject of “Public Health and Agriculture.” He suggested that a bold and generous food policy would reconcile the apparently conflicting interests of the fanners and the poor people who must have cheap food. With the object of raising prices, he said, tariffs and quotas had been applied to imports, and agriculture had been given powers to limit the amounts of home-produced foods coming on the market and to fix prices below which they might not be sold. These powers carried grave responsibilities. If they were fully developed, 7 per cent, of the population could control the food supply of the remaining 03 per cent. Those exercising these powers must therefore think not only of the wholesale price, which would make farming remunerative, but also of a retail price within the reach of all consumers. It had been found that some diseases and some forms of indefinite ill-health were duo to the absence of certain constituents from the diet. An investiga tion, the results of .which would be published shortly, had shown that the diets of the poorer classes were deficient in the substances required for health; that disease, stunted growth in children, and poor physique in adults, which one would expect to find in people on such diets, were, in fact, prevalent in the poorer half of the population, and that when the diet of the ordinary schoo' child was improved, growth was increased and health was improved. An estimate of the additional amount of different foodstuffs required to bring the diet of the poorer half of the community up to the standard required for health, ehowed that the consumption of eggs, fruit, vegetables, and meat should be increased by from 12 to 25 per cent. To bring the diet up to the level of the well-to-do classes would require an increase of about twice that amount. SUBSIDISING CONSUMPTION.

They were now beginning to realise that generous expenditure on unemployment and other great social measures had been justified on economic grounds. To-day what was needed was an extension of that policy to food. If such a policy were adopted the main objection to tariffs, etc., that they would raise the price of foodstuffs, would be removed; indeed, the policy could be based on tariffs, which would partly re coup the Treasury for the money spent on subsidising and home production. If they could have a subsidised national food policy in the interests both of agriculture and of health, agriculture would need to be developed along the lines of increasing the production of foodstuffs of special health value. If they had the courage to adopt a bold and generous policy of buying health and making a prosperous countrysid; by spending more money on a national food policy, they would reconcile the apparently conflicting interests of the farmer and the poor people, who must have cheap food; and lay the foundation of a healthier, happier race. LORD BLEDISLOE’S VIEWS. Lord Blcdisloe said Sir John Orr had painted a picture of underfeeding in a land of glutted food margets which was not only a blot on the British escutcheon but did credit neither to our national vision nor to our national organisation. Let the Government indicate —if need be after a special inquiry—what wore the national food requirements essential for the maintenance of the national health, the capacity of Great Britain and (failing Great Britain) other parts of the Empire to produce them, and the sources from which these essential food products of the highest quality could best be obtained on an economic basis, and then, by some form of fiscal protection or guarantee, assure to the efficient (but not the inefficient) producer a reasonable margin of profit, subject to the quality of the product and the reward of labour being adequate.