BRITISH FOOD SUPPLIES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4187, 18 September 1939, Page 4

BRITISH FOOD SUPPLIES

THE announcement of the British Minister of Food Control that rationing may be expected in three or four weeks’ time is accompanied by the statement that it will not be necessary sooner, since “ supplies are still plentiful.” But since it is the real purpose of a rationing scheme to avoid shortages rather than to meet them, Mr Morrison’s meaning, taken full width, probably was that the organisation will not be complete and wholly effective for three or four weeks, a period which can be spanned without it. This is, in fact, a very short time for the development, from plans on paper, of the machinery to control and distribute the food supplies of the nation. During the Great War the problem was new. Even when its extent and complexity were i ecognised, the necessary measures were not completely operative before the last months. Two anxious, find

difficult years had been survived. But the present emergency holds threats less serious, having been foreseen and prepared for; and preparation began at the point of advantage to which the experiments and experience of the Great War led. Further, few social investigations of the post-war years have been more thorough than that of the for the adequate feeding of a community. Some of the lessons of this many-sided inquiry will not be applicable. Some will even have to be defied. But, broadly, the truth is that the British authorities face the demands and dangers of the days ahead with an equipment of knowledge infinitely greater than 25 years ago, both about food supply and about food standards.

Food rationing is partly a question of distribution, partly of production. Consumption rates normally show a wide variation between the low and the high income groups; and a rationing plan, while it assures and equalises individual supply, can also effect a very considerable over-all economy. Mr Keith Murray has estimated this at about 10 per cent “ before an actual insufficiency is suffered by any section of the community.” But this margin, though not a negligible one, is not large enough to justify a policy of maintaining present standards of home production and of food imports, so far as possible. The heavy transport demands of an army in the field, the risks to shipping, the possible loss or contraction of some sources of oversea supply, and the possible withdrawal of man-power from agriculture to military service—these are some of the reasons that necessitate an emergency policy of home production and the most economical use of shipping space. British farming has moved through the last century steadily towards grass-land farming and away from crop farming. But although this process has brought various good results, an unfortunate one, at a time like this, is that farm output is much less adequate than it might be to feed the people. An acre in potatoes will produce 4,100,000 calories; the same acre, grazed for milk, will produce only 450,000 calories; grassed, or cropped to fatten stock, it will produce in meat even less. Obviously therefore, when its first object must be to ensure a sufficiency of food for the population, the British Government is bound to expand the acreage under plough; and Sir Reginald Dorman Smith, the Minister of Agriculture, announced last week that the IMar Agricultural Executive Committee in each county of England and Wales would aim at an.increase of about 1,500,000 acres in the tillage area ” for the 1940 harvest. This result will not be achieved without considerable sacrifice of live stock. British flocks and herds—pigs, poultry, sheep, and cattle—are likely to be reduced progressively, and perhaps sharply. Only the dairy herds, probably, will be fully conserved, because of the paramount need for fresh milk supply. Reduction of flocks and herds will, of course, so far as it is carried, increase the home supply of meat, but only temporarily. Imports, normally above 50 per cent, will become increasingly important. Egg production will fall away; dairy produce, other than fresh milk, will also decline. To what extent expanded production of cereals wiU reduce the need for wheat and flour imports cannot be safely estimated. But it may be noted, as of some significance, that the Australian Prime Minister, a day or two ago, said that the British Government would buy all Australia’s export surpluses, except of wheat. Either Great Britain counts on Canadian and American shipments, even without Russian ones, to make up the domestic deficiency in toto, or it is considered that cargo space from Australia will be more economically filled with meat, butter, and wool.