It is not altogether surprising that, when Mr. Anderson, the
United States Secretary of Agriculture, proposed to the International Emer- gency Food Council at Washington on Tuesday that there should be another world food conference in Europe in July, the British delegate, while assenting to the proposal, showed no enthusiasm for it. The only surfeit from which the hungry peoples of the world are in danger is a surfeit of conferences. Nevertheless there is just one argument in favour of this latest suggestion. Mr. Anderson urges that the conference should consider the orderly collection and distribution of indigenous food supplies. There is no doubt whatever that such consideration is now essential, and the Minis- ters of Food and Agriculture of the countries concerned should certainly accept the American suggestion and attend the conference, since they alone can initiate and manage the necessary controls. The fact is that there are few systems of food control as effective as the British, which Mr. Anderson went out of his way to commend. And unless the 8,000,000 tons of grain which the exporting areas will probably send out in July, August and September are properly husbanded they are all too likely to provide cover for the hoarding and black-market Operations which go on in every country in Europe. Neither Mr. Anderson nor Mr. Fitzgerald, the secretary-general of the International Emergency Food Council, gave prominence either to the efforts of the exporting countries or to the fact that those efforts have sometimes been given less credit than they deserve. But the plain fact is that unless they are supplemented by a greater degree of self-help in the importing countries the present attempt to handle the world food problem as a whole will break down.
Previous page
