BRITAIN’S FOOD

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1933, Page 21 (Supplement)

BRITAIN’S FOOD

RAISING IT AT HOME MOVE FOR SELF-RELIANCE. A POLITICAL PROBLEM. ’ . . 1 With the new turn in favour of eco- 1 nomic nationalism, England is confronted with the same problem of starvation that faced her in 1914 (writes Charlotte Kett in the San Francisco Chronicle). Mr. J. M. Keynes leaves small doubt on this score in his recent pronouncement: ■ “There is no prospect for the next generation of a uniformity of economic system throughout the world, such as existed, broadly speaking, during the nineteenth century; we all need to be as free as possible from interference from economic changes elsewhere, in order to make our own favourite experiments towards the ideal social republic of the future; and a deliberate movement towards greater national self-sufficiency and economic isolation will make our task easier.” Sir Eric Drummond reports that from his seat at the-world’s diplomatic switchboard in Geneva he has frequently heard the comment by foreign statesmen: “Well, if worst comes to worst, we are more self-contained than many other countries. . .” But England, since the dawn of the industrial revolution, has been far from “self-contained”; the problem now is to how great an extent she can become so as far as her food is concerned. , , , , , For four generations England has had a picture of herself as the workshop of the world and has been developing a fixed idea that British agriculture cannot supply the British dinner table. But now thousands of those workshop wheels that turned out the goods that were once exchanged for food are idle, and Major Walter Elliot, the Mussolini of British agriculture, is trying to encourage the British farmer to crowd foreign foodstuffs off the table-with a surfeit of his own products. PASSED IT ON. •England has not only ceased to be the “workshop of the world.” but she has sold others the machinery .to set up their own workshops, taught them the technique, and now has to contend with their competition. In 1924 she imported 41.000,000 square yards of cotton goods; five years later this figure had doubled, while her external market decreased at a more meteoric rate. Foi- example, British India, which in 1913 brought 2,805,000,000 yards of English cotton goods, in 1930 bought only 778,000,000. The condition is no better for woollens. Yarns that were exported to Poland in the amount of 2,078,0001 b in 1927 had fallen to 377,0001 b in 1930. Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia have increased their exports of woollens in the last ten years by an amount approximately equalling the decline in British exports of those products during the same time. It does not require an economist to see that this process cannot go on indefinitely. England sees that she must, in some way. go back to the land if she is to weather the era of economic warfare, but confusion reigns as to the methods. Agricultural experts are uncertain whether to outline a course that will produce the greatest amount of food, the greatest profit for the individual, or the greatest absorption by the land of the dislocated industrial population. In the last six years the Government's land settlement scheme has settled only 1100 men" on the land, yet the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Elliot) declares that it would be “black treachery” both to those they seek to settle and to those already settled to encourage a more rapid de- ■ velopment of this movement until they ' can be assured of a certain market. British agricultural policy is torn, as it [ has been for years, by the conflict between the loom and the plough. WHAT TO DO? Could the confusion of aim be settled, there would remain confusion as to ■ method. The field is divided between • 1 those who stress the need for increasing

the basic cereal crops and those who say that it is a waste of effort to try to raise cereals on this damp, foggy island when live stock and market gardening produce much better results. A recent report of the London Central Market shows that the cattle breeders have plenty of scope for their activities if they wish to meet the nation’s demand with their own produce. Of the city’s average weekly per capita consumption of meat (2.271 b only a quarter comes from the United Kingdom, and only another quarter from the Dominions. Ninety-four per cent, of the lamb exported in the world comes to England, as do 97 per cent, of the world’s bacon exports and 99 per cent, of Argentina’s chilled beef. All these imported products cost less in the retail market than does home-grown meat. WHAT IS LACKING? If Great Britain is to approach the new idea of being self-contained she must have recourse to every aid that modern science can give her for the improvement of her agriculture. But even science will not help her to produce tea, coffee, and oranges for some generations to come. On the other hand, those who consider wheat the basic crop for building up the country’s agricultural prosperity point out that with scientific methods the present cereal yield could be doubled without adding, to the acreage (1,346,150 acres in 1930).. This would still meet but two-fifths of the country’s total needs, but there are 12,750,000 ■ acres of useable land that could be brought under cultivation, and the wheat-growing area could be extended to cover 8,000,000 acres. According to this calculation England could supply her own cereal needs. The quality of English wheat has, until recently, been inferior. It was not until Sir Rowland Biffen and the Plant Breeding Research Institute produced the Yeoman wheats that a product of the English soil and climate could stand up to Red Fife and Manitoba Hard. ■ Experiment has also produced oats that yield seventy bushels an acre instead of the forty-five-bushel achievement of the potato oat hitherto known on this, island. •Mendelian principles applied to cattle and poultry have made the two thous-and-gallon cow and the two hundred-egg hen a commonplace, so that the production of poultry and eggs has risen from 32 per cent, of the country’s needs in pre-war days to 45 per cent, now, and is of more worth than the country s entire cereal output at the moment. The dairy industry employs twice as many men as the woollen industry, and three times as many as the iron and steel industry. There seems small doubt that the country could, in time, become selfcontained” in its dairy and poultry business. Efforts to put British agriculture on its feet, called “spoon-feeding” by their opponents, are working to overcome the conviction bom of the industrial era that starvation is the only possible result on the island of the stoppage of foreign trade, and slowly the counteiconviction is being born that, though it may mean loss of luxuries and going back in some places to goat. England can, if she must, feed herself.