THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1949. PROBLEMS OF SURPLUSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27274, 28 December 1949, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1949. PROBLEMS OF SURPLUSES

Although in this world today there is no such thing as a food surplus relative to the demand from the population of the world, the . problems of distribution are as far from being solved as ever they were. .•, Millions of people in under-developed ‘ countries are starving or suffering from malnutrition simply because between them and the cornucopias of ■ r ' the earth there have been raised i- barriers of the man-made conditions "of poverty, tariffs and inconverti)abilities of currency. The Food and ;n Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations recognised this desperate anomaly, and at a meeting of the World Food Council last June the. new Director-general, Mr N. E. Dodd, was asked to supervise the preparation of proposals for consideration by a plenary session of FAO. Six international trade commodity experts co-operated with the FAO staff to produce the recommendations which Mr Dodd recently submitted to the world f and on the basis of these 1 •’recommendations he earnestly urged the immediate establishment of an international commodity clearing -ghouse, through which surpluses of 'food could be marketed independently of normal international purchases. This scheme was welcomed by practical farmers .throughout the world, but their ' enthusiasm was not echoed by the delegates over whom Mr Dodd presided when the members of > 'FAO commenced their meeting in Washington last month.' The proi; posal for an international commodity clearing house was defeated in 4 favour of a somewhat nebulous ' : plan to establish a consultative 1 committee without, it would seem, ‘. any powers a’t all. 0 Once again petty nationalisms '•.have been permitted to obstruct a vV plan for overcoming one of the most it-serious economic problems of the day. The terrible results of “cheap” farm products, resulting from an accumulation of surpluses, have been -''disastrously proved. The alterna-.-/fives to finding markets for surpluses lie in restricting production, destroying food, or dumping it ... abroad at cut prices. All three courses are repugnant, and the last is likely to lead to competition in dumping or to retaliation by means of import restrictions and higher tariffs. The unanimous -;report of the committee of experts by Mr Dodd emphasised ..‘■•five steps towards a smoothly .functioning system of international /exchange: (1) The economy of the United States is so critically im■portant to the world that high levels . of production and employment must /’be maintained there. (2) Trade restrictions everywhere must be jJ reduced. (3) Production efficiency / must be increased. (4) There must t> be a large continuing flow of -’•capital investment from advanced rto under-developed countries. (5) Convertible currencies and multilateral transactions must be restored - as the basis of world trade. : These experts drew attention to '•.'the part played in the world " depression of 1929-1935 by neglect of farm prices and accumulating / surpluses, and in view of their .warning the delegates to FAO might 4’.:well have looked to present con- / ditions in the United States before - rejecting the proposal for a com--:V modify clearing house. In America /■the danger signals are already flying, '...and millions of dollars are being ../sunk in the policy of supporting "prices for farm products which /' be marketed. Surpluses are '"piling up of cereals, cotton, sugar, some fats and oils, and dried fruits. Marketing quotas are- already being considered for wheat and cotton, and a deliberate policy of reducing production of both these commodities • has been commenced. A commodity r clearing house would have taken . ’ over all these surpluses and found markets for them, but not in •. competition with customary exports "to purchaser countries. Some costs would be involved in creating such 1 .an organisation, but the cost of neglecting it might yet prove to be greater and more impoverishing, liiii ______ COMMUNIST CONFERENCES Two meetings of vital importance to the Communist parties throughout the world have been held during the past two months. A meeting of the Cominform was held early in November near Budapest and more recently there was a conference at - Peking of Asian and Australasian

trade unions which also was not /.'attended by any trumpet blasts of /‘publicity. Almost the only references in the cable news to the latter . conference described the reticence of an Australian who visited China ■’at that time apparently with the object of attending the meetings. p/Ttye Cominform meeting in Eastern ' ‘Europe launched a “ peace offensive” which was announced in what ‘/‘ the Economist has called “the most : 'belligerent resolutions on peace that bitter and suspicious men could ' up.” The Peking meeting

seems to have been the first ; 1 .appearance of something in the v nature of a Cominforrri for Eastern Asia and the South Pacific, and

./•although it was ostensibly merely a trade union gathering it is said to '/'have been wholly political and sn. extremely militant in tone and to have been concerned with marking //out the main lines on which }Chinese Communism is to be ' developed. The contrast between /’ these secretive assemblies and those, ‘ for instance, of the Council of Europe and the newly formed . organisation of anti-Communist ‘ * international trade unions, is

unlikely to stimulate any. confidence , in them as attempts to contribute to - the fulfilment of the Christmas message: “ On earth peace, goodwill

toward men.” The pretensions of the Cominform vii have been exposed in a statement / /issued by the International Socialist Committee which was . u published a few days ago. They have • a i S o been commented upon else- '' ..where. One point which has been referred to, and which should give "'■food for thought to such as consider

themselves Communists, was that almost the only familiar names at the Cominform meeting were those of the delegates from. France and Italy. In Eastern Europe itself many of those who were prominent in the Communist parties of Hungary, Bulgaria and the other satellite countries have been purged as Soviet Russia more and more overtly takes control. The recent appointment of Marshal Rokossovsky as Polish Minister of Defence was a remarkable demonstration of the extent to which pretence has been dropped. It can easily be imagined that it was not a conference which was held near Budapest, but a meeting at which Moscow delivered its orders. The Economist’s summingup was: “ The fight for peace means the advancement of Soviet interest; the warmonger is a persoh who calls a halt to that process. The universal desire to avoid war is being played on with the suggestion that it can only happen as a result of preparing resistance to Soviet policies.” From the Peking conference a similar conclusion is apparently to be drawn. Nationalist movements, it appears, are of good repute only when they are consistently opposed to “ western imperialism ”; any tendency to seek independence but to remain friendly afterwards with the former colonial power is anathema. In these two conferences there is to be seen for the first time clear Communist organisation on both of Russia’s fronts. In’ Europe the cold war persists; it can be prolonged indefinitely and the temperature regulated at will. In the East there is still much to be won—or lost. The democracies have nothing, so far, to make effective counter to the Communist offensive which is being developed in this vast region.