WORLD DEPENDENCE ON NORTH AMERICA FOR GRAIN SUPPLY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26959, 20 December 1948, Page 5

WORLD DEPENDENCE ON NORTH AMERICA FOR GRAIN SUPPLY

Rec. 8 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 18. The failure of a single harvest in North America could bring disaster, said the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Tom Williams, in a speech to farmers. “Underlying the temporary improvement this year there is fundamental long-term insecurity. World stocks are low and importing countries everywhere are having to look more than they have ever done before to the North American continent for the greater part of their supplies. “This dependence upon supplies from that quarter is increasingly dangerous,” said Mr Williams. “ The world population is rising by 20,000.000 to 25.000,000 yearly and food production is not keeping pace. There are no large areas in the world simply waiting for the plough. Such uncultivated areas as exist can only be developed with a great effort spread over many years, and although we are undertaking big schemes of this kind here and there, we cannot look to them to solve the chronic food shortage.” “ The solution can only lie ultimately in a large increase in production in all countries. Even so, North America will remain the most important source of the world’s grain supplies, and we must look to an improvement in the free flow of international trade so that countries can afford to buy what they need from America.” Production Records

A message from Washington says that the final harvest reports issued to-day showed that the aggregate volume of all crops was 8.7 per ceni. above the record set in 1947. Production records were established in corn, flax-seed, soyabeans, peanuts, and rice. The wheat crop was second only to the 1947 record and the overall grains total, 179,000,000 tons tons more than in 1947.