Nutrition and Food Supplies
1936-09 1936 1930s 33 pages : illustration Cheap Food or Higher Wages? The Potato Board’s experiment in Bishop Auckland was an attempt to bring prices down to an uneconomic level to meet the needs of families on low incomes. While mass poverty is prevalent there may be a case for similar...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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London : The Labour Party
September 1936
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/B1CC86A6-586D-4822-BC56-4B95E15C10EA http://hdl.handle.net/10796/F99C489B-0634-45F0-B8B9-A757AEF67F17 |
| Summary: | 1936-09
1936
1930s
33 pages : illustration
Cheap Food or Higher Wages? The Potato Board’s experiment in Bishop Auckland was an attempt to bring prices down to an uneconomic level to meet the needs of families on low incomes. While mass poverty is prevalent there may be a case for similar experiments in particular areas, but we cannot regard this as a satisfactory way of dealing with the problem of gluts and underfeeding. It is an extension of the principle of “benefits in kind” to the unemployed, and such a principle is not likely to find general acceptance to-day. If low-paid workers were included — and many of them are as badly off as the unemployed — it would be in effect a subsidy to employers who pay low wages. Further, we have no right merely to clamour for cheap food without regard to the standard of life of those who produce it. We must be prepared to pay a price for our food which will ensure a decent living to those who work on the land. While more efficient production and marketing will enable us to cut out unnecessary costs, the only sound long-term approach to the problem of raising food consumption to a level consistent with health is to concentrate on raising general standards throughout all sections of workers. Planning for Health A National Food Policy to be successful must therefore be part of a general economic policy directed towards raising wage standards. Its special aim will be a healthier community. Questions as to what and how much we should produce at home and what and how much we should buy abroad should be decided in relation to Nutrition after the food requirements of the nation have been estimated, and an effort made to measure the deficiency in consumption of essential foods. We should concentrate on developing home production of high-grade foods which are essential to health, and which are more valuable and more palatable in fresh natural condition — milk, dairy products, eggs, fruit, vegetables, meat — and should also import sufficient quantities of foodstuffs to make up deficiencies in home production. 26
127/NU/5/5/1/12 |
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |