GERMAN FOOD PROBLEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22834, 19 March 1936, Page 10

GERMAN FOOD PROBLEM

The critical food situation in Germany and the emergency measures taken to deal with it leu to a number of arrests in various parts of the country recently (reported the Berlin correspondent of thtr Sunday Times). At GVra (Thuringa) a summary court sentenced a farmer to a month's imprisonment and a fine of £lB and the land owner and his Wife to two weeks' imprisonment and fines ot £8 for not delivering their milk to the central authorities in tlie province, according to the new agricultural regulations. Instead, it was alleged, they kept back nearly half the milk they produced, made it into butter, and sold this at a profiteering price. At Stolzenau, near Hanover, a number of local farmers were sentenced to heavy fines for selling pigs at prices above the maximum fixed by the Ministry of Food Supplies. Similar action was taken against four cattle dealers in Breslau. The shortage of pork, which is the staple meat of all classes in Germany, continues throughout the country. Professor Buenger, of the Prussian Milk Research Institute, said in a lecture at Kiel that the only ultimate cure for the shortage of fat lay in providing more albumen for cows. This had previously been supplied by oil-cake imported from abroad, and German fodder producers must improve their methods in order to fill the gap left when the imports of oil-cake had to be discontinued owing to the lack of foreign exchange. The average German cow, he said, gave 500 gallons of milk a year.