OUR PERSISTENT WINTER FOOD SHORTAGES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 261, 31 July 1919, Page 6

OUR PERSISTENT WINTER FOOD SHORTAGES

SUGGESTED REMEDIES. ' Sir,—Every winter 'Wellington is 6hort • of milk and eggs, and prices scar, to the hurt especially of families. Aud every winter this trouble will increase unless some definite action ho taken by the corporation. The war taught Great Britain the need of control of food supplies. Why should not the corporation prepare to meet and lessen this trouble, which will come next winter "and every wintcri 1 Every winter there is a shortage of butter. Yet all this spring, summer, and autumn enormous quantities of butter are shipped to Great Britain. Surely the remedy is simple. The corporation should buy butter sufficient for the winter, and put it in cool storage. By this simple means Wellington people would have' ample butter throughout the year at an all-round, even price. Every summer eggs are plentiful; every winter not enough for.the people. How easy for the corporation to buy vast numbers of eggs when plentiful ,and put them in cold storage—and we have eggs at a moderate cost a'.l the year round. In the United States eggs are putuu. coM stores by the million, In New j York 250,000,000 eggs were bought in tie I plentiful summer, cool stored, and doled : out in the winter by ..egg speculators, I who gained huge profits. Bees, other in- | sects, squirrels, etc., hoard food for the winter; surely we should follow their wise lead. V In the cold parts of Russia, for'2oo or more years milk was frozen by nature, stored in sheds, bits' broken off by a hammer and used in tea. The corporation is handling our milk supply. Every winter milk will be in short supply. Why not buy summer milk and'' store for winter? v Several dried milk factories are about to be started in the Wellington and Taranaki districts. In the future I believe that as we now buy tea aud sugar in packets, 60 we shall buy nur dried milk\ AVhen this happens there will be ample supplies of milk throughout the year. If fresh milk be wanted foj babies and delicate persons, there would always then be plentiful supplies each winter for this limited class. The remedies are so simple, and we have the actual experiences of other countries to guide us. that there is nothing experimental in the matter. All kinds of food so plentiful in summer can be stored against winter shortage—egfts, fish, meat, vegetables, fruit—l am, etc., . ALFRED K. NEWMAN.