TOMMY’S FOOD PLOTS

Southland Times, Issue 18745, 3 December 1919, Page 2

TOMMY’S FOOD PLOTS

MESOPOTAMIA WONDERS. Although interrupted by advances and retirement#, and other military movements, many thousands of acres of land behind the British front in France were under cultivation by our troops, just as at homo and in other fields of war overseas. In the report of the Army Agricultural Committee it is stated that last year there was a profit of approximately £68,000 in the cultivation of 6458 acres in the Home Command. As regards France, the work done resuited in the saving of cereals, which would otherwise have been lost, on 18,000 acres, and the production on the spot (and thereby the saving of transport) of at least £500,000 worth of vegetables. Irrigation and cultivation in Mesopo tamia resulted in the Army there being self-supporting in vegetables and in both the native population and the Army being practically able to do without imported grain. Exact figures are not available, but the report says it seems reasonable to believe that the value of the produce in Mesopotamia in 1918 would be between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000, and that there was a saving of about 500,000 tons of shipping. But for this local supply there would have been great danger of a reproduction in Mesopotamia of the famine conditions in the neighbouring territories of Turkey and Persia. As it was, the local authorities were able to aid numbers of starving and destitute Christians, Armenians, and East Syrians who had fled to the protection of the British Army. The Committee estimate that the aggregate results for 1918, at home and in France, Mesopotamia and Salonika, may be safely taken as representing a value exceeding £3,000,000, and a saving in freight of 600,000 tons of shipping.