The Food Tragedy
The solemnity with which the Foreign Secretary introduced in the TJNO General Assembly the Five-Power resolution on the conservation of food supplies was no less than the occasion deserved. A permanently bad situation is daily and hourly growing worse. A world shortage of food is not a new phenomenon. Nor is its aggravation by extreme maldistribution. But the situation is even worse now than it has been for many years. The often-quoted, but still provisional and slightly misleading figure of a 5,000,000-ton deficit in overseas supplies of wheat and flour is bad enough. The substitutes for the staple food grains, such as they are, are also short. It has been estimated that overall world food production in 1945 was some 12 per cent. per head below the already inade- quate pre-war level. Only in the United States, Canada, the British Isles and the Middle East was food production in 1945 relatively good. There is a strong presumption that the 1946-47 season will see an overall improvement, though this crumb of comfort could be removed by further bad harvests. In the mean- time, a great part of the world faces starvation, another large part general hunger, and all the rest, including this country, varying degrees of inconvenience. Redistribution in the meantime can do much. The worst danger spot is India, where continued drought is almost certain to produce a major famine in a few months. There is still time to rush emergency supplies of wheat and rice to the threatened area. Europe, outside Denmark and Sweden, hovers on the brink of disaster, and has so far only been saved by a relatively mild winter. The rest of the world, including ourselves, must pinch and scrape lest a worse thing befall.
