Allied Wheat Buying in Relationship to Canadian Marketing Policy, 1914-18

Abstract

At the outbreak of war in August, 1914, plans to cope with a possible food scarcity in the Allied countries were of a rudimentary character. For example, in the War Book of the British Government, there was only one measure dealing directly with food, and that a measure for obtaining information. In France the only legislation on agriculture or foodstuffs existing at the outbreak of war was a law of the period of the Revolution, dating back to July, 1791, which authorized the fixing of retail prices for bread and meat. Hence, methods of procedure had to be improvised as difficulties arose and it was not until well on towards the close of hostilities that anything like a comprehensive food policy had been devised.As the central foodstuff in the diet of the peoples of the western Allied powers, bread came to play a leading role in the development of food policy. In the words of the body that was later to dominate world import trade in wheat, bread was “the only diet which sufficed in isolation and was therefore, indispensable.” Other foods might fail or be in short supply, but starvation seemed a long way off so long as there was enough bread. In the United Kingdom an implicit “breadstuffs policy” underlay the whole structure of food policy. Though never expressed in any one document, that policy has been stated in these words: whatever else was allowed to be in short supply, whether for human or for animal consumption, there should be a sufficiency of breadstuffs to meet in full all demands for them without rationing. In the other European Allied countries the direction of policy is not so clear but, with surprising unanimity, efforts were directed to keeping bread cheap and plentiful.