The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1944. Food Situation In Germany

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23114, 31 January 1945, Page 4

The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1944. Food Situation In Germany

food shortages will be only part of the accumulating difficulties which may bring about the collapse of Germany within a reasonably short time, they must be a substantial factor in the general disintegrating process The food problem has been complicated because foodstuffs are no longer available from Russia, the Balkan countries and western Europe, and the surpluses from Western Poland, Czechoslovakia and Denmark can have no appreciable effect at a time when at least 8,000,000 foreign workers must be fed from German supplies. The political and military situation has compelled the German authorities to give foreign workers engaged in German agriculture and industry the same rations as German workers. What was harvested in Germany last autumn has to last for the feeding of livestock and human consumption until the new harvest this year. The question, therefore, arises whether Germany will be able to carry on the war through the present winter with the supplies available.

The first stages of the agricultural plan for 1944-45 are reported as being carried out under extreme difficulties. There is first of all, because of military retreats, a reduction in the area to be sown and planted. Next, the fertiliser quotas, especially nitrogen and phosphates, have again been reduced. No relief is expected or is possible in the labour shortage. The peasants are overworked but are still under effective control, which is partly mitigated by a system of privileges and premiums. Allotment gardening and the breeding of backyard poultry and rabbits by townspeople have either declined, because of bomb damage and overwork at factories, or have been restricted in order to save feeding stuffs. Generally speaking, there is little possibility of eking out rations by buying in the black tngrket or by allotment gardening. The fact is that the Germans have almost nothing beyond their rations, which have become increasingly monotonous. Fruit, tobacco and alcohol are rare commodities. The cigarette ration, for example, has been' reduced to two cigarettes a day. Citrus fruit, raisins,, olives from Spain, Italy and the Balkans have disappeared. The present distribution of supplies is stated to depend on a complicated system of control and zoning. If the administrative machinery is disrupted, the system of delivery and the supplies for the towns must at finely be affected. Each new advance of the Allied armies enforces changes in this system. A shortage of railway trucks may undo the careful plan for the distribution of potatoes and other foodstuffs.

At the moment of defeat Germany should be supplied with foodstuffs sufficient for continuing the present rations, states the Economist, but it is doubtful whether the distributive machinery will still be in working order. General shortages, mostly of a local’ character, will be unavoidable, and the mass movements of foreign workers and of Germans trying to get back to their former places of residence will make any adequate distribution of available supplies impossible. The harvest of 1945 will certainly be smaller than in 1944 even if the weather should file' favourable. It cannot be doubted that the agricultural administration will kill off a considerable part of the livestock in order to maintain the meat ration during the winter. The soil will show signs of exhaustion, because of the shortage of fertilisers and machinery, and for some years yields will be low. In fact, German agriculture will probably experience even greater difficulties than after 1918 when for more than four years production remained at a very low level.