CONCLUSION 283 



Among the food products which come in this second class 

 we must put meat, oats, barley, maize, fruits, tea, coffee, 

 cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs. 



The position with regard to meat appears to be that in the 

 United Kingdom we produce about 60 per cent, of our require- 

 ments, and the rest we have to import. New Zealand sends 

 us large quantities of mutton, and Australia both of mutton 

 and beef, yet we are largely dependent on foreign countries 

 for our supplies : on the Argentine for beef and mutton, on 

 the Netherlands and Denmark for pork and bacon, and on the 

 United States for hams. Nevertheless, there seems every 

 reason to hope that in the future conditions may be improved, 

 and that not only Australia and New Zealand, but Canada, 

 South Africa, Rhodesia, and the Sudan may multiply their 

 flocks and herds and eventually render the empire self-sup- 

 porting. 



The empire has made enormous strides of late years in the 

 growing of all kinds of fruit, most notably of bananas in 

 Jamaica, apples in Canada, oranges and other citrus fruits in 

 South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, grapes, both fresh 

 and in the form of raisins and currants, in Australia, and dried 

 plums and many other kinds of fruit in South Africa. 



With regard to butter the Commissioners say : ' On the 

 whole it seems doubtful whether the supplies of butter of 

 empire production available for consumption in the United 

 Kingdom could be made to exceed 4J million hundredweights 

 at the utmost. If the consumption remains at about 6J million 

 hundredweights, the deficiency to be supplied from foreign 

 countries would be about 2 million hundredweights. The 

 deficiency could undoubtedly be met by an increasing produc- 

 tion of margarine, the materials for which exist in adequate 

 quantities within the empire.' 



The case of sugar is notorious. Before the war our imports 

 consisted chiefly of beet-sugar from Germany ; out of a total 

 of 23 million pounds' worth, only 1 million pounds' worth came 

 from British countries. Yet the West Indies, Mauritius, 



