FOOD IN WAR TIME

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4043, 4 May 1938, Page 5

FOOD IN WAR TIME

EVENTS IN EUROPE. HOW THE BRITISH FARED. THE RATION CARDS. One of the problems which Great Britain has to face in connection with her defensive preparations for war is the provision of food supplies for her civilian population, as well as for her fighting forces, says a writer in the Melbourne “Age.” In peace time Great Britain imports nearly £320,000,000 worth of foodstuffs each year, an amount which is equivalent to a little more than £6OO every minute. The British Isles produce only one-fifth of the wheat dequired to feed the population, threefifths of the meat and bacon, and very little of the sugar. Only in respect of fish, potatoes, and milk are they self-sufficient, and the consumption of milk is eked out by the importation of condensed varieties. Threefold Question. The question of food supplies for the people of Great Britain in time of war divides itself into three parts. One is the encouragement of home production, the second is the storage of wheat in the country, and the third is the protection of shipping bringing food to the country from overseas in war time. According to recent advice from London, the National Farmers’ Union of Great Britain is asking the Government to draw up a plan for subsidising British agriculture for a period of five years, by remunerative prices for their crop and farm ’ products, and by contributing to the wages of farm hands. Such a plan is considered by the Farmers’ Union to be essential to the country’s defensive preparations for war. It would arrest the decline in agriculture which has been in progress for a number of years. Under present conditions workers are leaving the land, and the equipment of the farms is deteriorating. The building of national granaries in Great Britain for the storage of wheat to provide bread in war time is being advocated. It has been estimated that granaries capable of storing a. two months’ supply of wheat for Great Britain (about 44,000,000 bushels) could be built for £5,000,000, which is less than the cost of a modern battleship. Storage by Millers. In addition to national granaries, millers in Great Britain could provide storage for a large supply of wheat, but they would have to protected by the Government from financial loss. During the Great War all of the chidf belligerent countries suffered

from shortage of food supplies, and in most of them, bread, meat, butter and other foods had to be rationed. The rationing was so severe in enemy countries cut off from food supplies from abroad, except limited quantities from a few neighbouring countries, that many people suffered from semi-starvation. But even in France and Great Britain there was a shortage of foods, owing to the success of enemy submarines in sinking ships which were carrying foodstuffs to them from overseas. And in Great Britain national rat’oning continued for two years after the war ended, owing to a world shortage of food caused by the withdrawal of millions of men from productive occupations in order to f.ght in the war. Not Needed for Years. The rationing of food began in Germany at a comparatively early stage of the war, but national rationing was not adopted in Great Britain for any article of food until more than two years after the war commenced. But in the meantime, a Ministry of Food had been created to deal with the many complicated aspects of food supplies. For some months before the introduction of compulsory rationing, this Ministry had virtually taken over the control of the country’s food by purchasing supplies abroad, shipping them to Great Britain, and distributing them through the ordinary trade channels. Compulsory rationing of the nation was delayed as long as possible, because in official circles it was felt that its institution would be regarded by Germany and the outside world as proof of the approaching triumph of the German threat to starve Great Britain into surrender by means of submarine warfare. Some of the rationed foods, such as butter, cheese and jam, were not always procurable, and there was often a complete absence of other foods that were not rationed, such as potatoes, dried fruits and honey. For a long period matches were almost unobtainable, and many housewives had to keep a gas jet alight all day at low pressure in order to light the gas oven when it was required. So pronounced is the preference of the mass of the population of Great Britain for white bread over biown that the Ministry of Food, when rationing bread to 41b per week, shrank from increasing the supply of flour by substituting wholemeal flour for white. What it did was to order the dilution of flour with barley, rice or maize. The percentage of dilution began at 5 per cent., but was increased to 15 before rationing ceased. Bread was never strictly rationed by means of food cards, as was the case with meat, butter, tea and other foods. The difficulty about rationing bread was that its consumption has always varied a great deal among different classes of the community. The wealthy classes in England eat very little bread, and the consumption among the middle classes is far below the consumption among the

working-class families, where bread is the chief article of diet, because

of its comparative cheapness. In older to check the ever-increasing- cost of living during the war,, which naturally caused much discontent among the working classes, the Government sold flour to the bakers at a loss, so as to keep down the price of bread to 9d per 41b loaf, which was 50 per cent, above the pre-war price. Eventually the price rose to Is Id per 41b loaf, but the Government spent £152,000,000 in selling flour at a loss so as to keep the price down. The effect of rationing in reducing the size of the queues outside the shops was immediate. According to official figures, the number of people in queues outside the shops within the area covered by the London metropolitan police during the week before the compulsory rationing was 1,337,692. But the week after rationing was introduced the number in queues was only 14,467 . And a number of the people in these smaller queues were waiting to purchase unrationed articles. In Germany flour was diluted with all kinds of ingredients, which had the effect of making the bread hard, and almost uneatable. Clothing, boots and other wearing apparel were also rationed in Germany.