§ Mr. Leachasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that fanners in urban areas, with little pasture for feeding purposes, are suffering an acute shortage of cattle food with damaging consequences to the production of milk; and 750W can he release for their benefit further supplies of cake, meal or other foods.
Mr. HudsonThe main problem is to safeguard the milk supply in winter. Owing to the short supplies of imported feeding stuffs and the need to establish reserves for winter use it is essential that dairy cows should be kept to the maximum extent on pasture during the summer. Farmers who keep cows intensively and who normally buy large quantities of feeding stuffs in relation to their milk output were warned in April that they should make arrangements to adjust themselves to the conditions of shortage of concentrates that would obtain during the summer months. A supply of concentrated feeding stuffs has been placed at the disposal of each county war agricultural executive committee for issue to dairy farmers whose pasture deteriorates quickly in quality and quantity and a number of other measures have been adopted during the summer to counteract deficiencies in pastures. I regret that in view of the present supply position it is not possible to make available any further quantities of concentrates at the present time.