BRITAIN'S FOOD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 628, 5 September 1933, Page 7

BRITAIN'S FOOD

source of supply ONE OF LEAST "SELFCONTAINED" OF NATIONS. POLITICAL PROBLEM. With the new turn in fayour of economic nationalism, England is confronted with' the same prohlem of starvation that faced her in 1914 (writes Charlotte Kett in the San Francisco Chronicle). Mr. J. M*. Keynes leaves small douht on htis 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, durin the nineteenth century ; we all need to be as free as possible from interference from economic changes elsewhere, in order to make our favourite experiments towards the ideal social republic of the future; aiid a deliberate mov«ment towards greater national self-sufficiency and economic isolation will make our task easier." 'Sir Eric Drummond reports that from his seat a.t the world's diplomatic switchboard in Geneva he has frequently heard the comment by various foreign statesmen: "Well, if •the worst comes to worst, we are more self-contained than many other countries. . . ." But England, since the dawn of th'e 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 th'e British dinner table. But now thousa-nds of those workshop wheels that turned out the goods that were once exchanged for food are idle, and Major Walter Elliott, the Mussolini of British agriculture, is try.ing 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, with her external market decreased at a more meteoric rate. For example, British India, which in 1913 bought 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 2,078,0001b in 1927 had fallen to 377,0001b 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 sonie way, go back to the land if she is to weather the era of economist warfare, but confusion reigns as to the methods. Agriculture experts are uncertain whether to outline a course ' that will produce the greatest amount of food, the greatest profit for the in- ' dividual, or the greatest ahsorption ' by the land of the dislocated indus- ' trial 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 he "black treachery" both to those they seek to settle and to those already settled to encourage a more ' rapid development of this movement ' until they can be assured of a certain ' market. British agriculture policy is ' torn, as it has been for years, by the confliet between the loom and the i plough. What To Do? Could the confusion of aim be settled there would remain confusion as to method. The field is divided between those that stress the need for increasing the basic cereal crops and those that say that it is a waste oi 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 eapita consumption of meat (2.271b), only a quarter comes from the United Kingdom and only another qnarter from the Dominions. Ninetyfour per cent. of the lamb expoited in the world comes to Ehgland, as d 97 per cent. of the world s bacon experts and 99 per cent. of Argentum s chilled beef. A1 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 everya^h modern science can give her f oi the improvement of her agriculture. But even science will not help her to pro duce tea, coffee, and oranges foi some generations to come. On the other hand, thcsethatconsider wheat the basic crop foi huilding up the country's agricultural nrosperity point out that with scien tific methods the present cereal ^eld could be doubled without addmg _ the acreage (1,346,150 acres m 1930.) This would still meet but two-fifths of the country's total needs, , but there are 12,750 000 acres of useahle land that could he brought under cultivation, and the wheatgrowing area could be extended to cover 8,000,000 acres. Accordmg 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 piant Breeding Research Institute produced the Yeoman wheats that a prodliet of tKe English soil and climate could stand up to Red Fife and Manitoba Hard. , , Experiment has also produced oats that yield seventy bushels an acre mstead of the f orty-five bushel achieveinent of the potato oat hitherto known on this island. ' Mendelian principles applied to cattle and poultry have made the two

thousand-gallon cow and the two hundred egg hen a commonplaee, 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.