DUTCH PRODUCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1940, Page 9

DUTCH PRODUCE

LOSS TO GREAT BRITAIN. CHEESE AND VEGETABLES. The Food Minister’s statement regarding the effects of the over-run-ning of Holland upon our overseas food 1 supplies was timely, said a writer in the “Glasgow Herald,” on May 22. The fact that the cuts in our butter and bacon rations were announced on top of the German occupation of that country was apt to give the public wrong impressions. These reductions in the scale of our butter and bacon rations were due to earlier happenings. The Danish occupation several weeks earlier was a much larger factor influencing these decisions and also in reducing our imports of eggs. The defection of Holland as a food supplier, however, will affect a much wider range of articles than did the cessation of Danish shipments to our markets. The most important of these other foods are fresh vegetables, condensed milks, and cheese. The vegetable position warrants the comment made by the Food Minister upon the value of the domestic allotments movement, because it is unfortunately true that we shall not be able substantially to replace the market garden produce that came from Holland except by our own efforts in the sphere of home production. Board of Trade returns do not particularise regarding vegetable imports to any extent. But housewives do not require to be told that the British market relied a great deal on Dutch cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuces, peas, carrots, and turnips, and also on onions, tomatoes, potatoes, as well as garden flowering bulbs. When it is noted that lettuces were retailing in Glasgow at the beginning of this week at 8d each it will be appreciated that' the loss of Netherlands produce is a serious drawback at certain seasons of the year.

There is assuredly great scope for enterprise, by the average household which rents an allotment, in aiming at more self-sufficiency in the class of vegetables that formerly were available reasonably pheap largely because of Dutch imports. It may be that this present experience will prove a blessing in disguise if it demonstrates how far we can replace these imports with home produce fresh from our own gardens or allotments. We are accustomed to associate onions with Spain and with Brittany. But the 1938 returns of imported produce show that of the British total imports 4,578,462 cwt of onions, just short of 2,000,000 cwt came from Holland, which was the largest overseas supplier. The only other specified articles of the vegetable category that are available in separate figures are tomatoes and potatoes. Of our 1938 imports of tomatoes, amounting to 2,871,651 cwt, Holland sent 314,333 cwt, while of our potato imports, amounting to 2,923,190 cwt. she sent 353,631 cwt. The great bulk of our potato imports nowadays are early crops from the Channel Islands. The Dutch produce was chiefly main crop, and can easily be replaced by our own growers.

Other lines in which Holland figured as an important supplier, apart from bacon, butter, and eggs, were condensed milk (especially the skimmed variety) and margarine. Holland has had a long connection with margarine enterprise. Of our 1938 imports, amounting to 101,000 cwt (which compares with as much as 750.000 cwt in 1931) we took 92,000 cwt from that source alone. Likewise, of our total imports of 1.217.532 cwt of condensed skimmed milk Holland’s share ran to no less than 1.000,545 cwt.