FOOD MARKETING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1941, Page 3

FOOD MARKETING

NEW CONTROL AUTHORITY,

The interesting feature of Lord Woolton’s latest experiment, the creation of a vegetable marketing company to stimulate the production and control the distribution of, initially, carrots and onions, is that its form is extra-departmental, says the “Economist.” After a period in which marketing boards were the bureaucratic fashion, there .is a reversion to the semiindependent public utility formula, of which the 8.8. C. and London Transport provide the prototypes. The business of the new company, and the necessity for its creation are clear. Price control, the disappearance of external transport difficulties have impaired the normal functioning of the vegetable market; now, a national price, a certain buyer, and a distributor who takes account of need as well as of convenience, are social and economic necessities. The company is, in fact, to perform a function which is the reverse of rationing, but which is dictated by the same considerations —it is to ensure the just and equitable distribution of goods in plentiful, supply. It will be a matter of the keenest interest to see how its performance compares with that of the Potato Marketing Board, a department engaged on a similar task.