GREATER PRODUCTION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6443, 7 November 1947, Page 5

GREATER PRODUCTION

NEED STRESSED BY LORD BLEDISLOE PERIOD ON INCREASING AUSTERITY' “The period of increasing austerity will last for at least two years, and may last much longer,” said Viscount Bledisloe speaking to a meeting of food producers at Gloucester. Viscount Bledisloe, who is president of the Gloucestershire Home Food Production Society, said, “At no period since I initiated the Food Production Movement in 1916 has the food outlook been more serious or more critical than it is to-day. For the first time for over 100 years we are faced in this country with the prospect of starvation. “I have just returned from a good will mission from the Royal Agricultural Society of England to the farmers of Australia and New Zealand. That mission became a Food for Britain Campaign. “I received unanimous assurances at every meeting up and down those two great Dominions that they would do that in spite of the fact that they had no financial incentive so far as their income-tax is concerned, and in spite of the fact that Communistic docksiders at some of the ports were taking as long as four months to unload and load ships, whilst food cargoes were lying on the wharves waiting to be shipped to England. It is unfortunate that the turn round of ships is taking four months instead of three weeks as it should.” “Throughout the two great Dominions as well as in America, there is an unfortunate element of criticism which runs rather like this:— “We read of the record attendances . at race meetings, at cinemas and at * seaside resorts. We hear further suggestions for a reduction in the working day, and we hear of demands for largely increased wages for labour.” They go on: “Are the people of Britain getting all the fuel for their furnaces and all the food for their people then can? “I venture to say that the time has come when we have got to throw off any war weariness and put our shoulders to the wheel and produce as much as is possible.”