“SPECTRE OF HUNGER”

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 74, Issue 6365, 2 May 1947, Page 7

“SPECTRE OF HUNGER”

BRITISH LEADER’S MESSAGE

TASK BEFORE FARMING INDUSTRY

A striking assessment of the present state and immediate prospects of the food supply of Great Britain was given in a broadcast talk to the people of Britain by Mr James Turner, president of the National Farmers’ Union, last month. Hunger, he said, could be averted only by tho greatest possible effort. ■“We have come very close to the collapse of industry through lack of coal, which we possess in abundance. Make no mistake about it, we can quickly land ourselves in an even worse crisis if the nation is so indifferent to its abundance of land fertility that the countryside has got to fight every inch of the way for the requisites to increase, your food supplies,” said Mr Turner. “What we do not now possess in abundance is foreign exchange. Here a simple fact faces everybody in the country; agriculture is seriously short of labour and of the capital equipment which urban factories produce; if, through lack of them, or for any other reason, cur farms are not in full production, we shall have to make ominous inroads into our foreign exchange resources.

“The country knows—or ought to have learned by now—more about the repercussions of a jettisoned agriculture than it did 20 years ago. The fact that you consumers have to be heavily subsidised to enable you to purchase food from home and oversea resources at less than its cost of production is the strongest possible illustration of the fool’s paradise we were living in before the war, when both capital and labour were progressively drained away from the land. Consumer Subsidies “Let nobody tell me that it is the farmer who is subsidised to-day. Food subsidies are consumer subsidies; no other industry could, or would, sell its goods at less than cost, as world agriculture was forced to do a few years ago. ■“Britain is now faced with the pressing need to put first things first —and a sound economy for agriculture means nothing less than need Number I—the people’s food. “The spectre of hunger, like the spectre of bankruptcy and unemployment, is not so remote as might be imagined, and the whole country must awaken to that fact. “There is going to be a desperate struggle on the farms in the coming months to provide you with your rations. We want, and want quickly, all the farm machinery the industrial areas can turn out io help produce food in this country to replace imports. “We need—and need now—all the supplementary labour that is available to augment our skilled (Raftsmen.

“Somewhere, a balance must be struck between the needs of food production at home and the development of our export market in agricultural machinery where it will be used to grow food in other countries.

“The farming calendar is weeks behind and that means that your rations for the next 12 months are in real danger. When we can get on to the land with tractor and plough, when we can assess our storm losses of sheep and cattle in the snow drifts, when we compare the woefully small force of the Old 1 Contemptibles of the land with the job confronting them, then the battle for food will be on with a vengeance.

“Skilled labour is our great need, but there is little doubt that we shall have to call on the public to come out again and help with the hay, corn and root harvests.

“To farmers and farm workers I want to say this: You achieved miracles during- the war in saving this country from starvation and surrender, and although the war is over you have not been able to relax. The townsman may not. be able to appreciate the extent of our production problems, but we know them to be many—and tough! A United Industry

“We, the farmers and farm workers must, for the nation’s sake, pledge ourselves as a united industry to put into it all we-ve got. “A frank talk between every farmer and his men should take place at once and a team spirit be infused so that a national food' catastrophe can be avoided by unity of effort. We can show 1 the nation an example in this hour of economic stress. “Farm workers need have no fear of a preference for labour. The British farm worker, with a will to work in such a team as we must now create, has no superior in any land. “‘The individuality, initiative and reliability of the farmer are unsurpassed in any other walk of life and we must at all costs cherish those faculties.

“Agriculture’s history is a chequered story; Britain’s future depends to an ever-increasing degree on the future of agriculture—and the future of agriculture depends on a wider public appreciaton of its contribution to the country’s economic security.” Mr Turner concluded by saying that the whole nation must awaken to this fact. We of agriculture would work like fury for a harvest of national stability.