The Combined Food Board was a temporary World War II government agency that allocated the combined economic resources of the United States and the United Kingdom. It was set up by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
on June 9, 1942. Canada, after insisting on its economic importance, was given a place on the board in November, 1942. At first the Board was a pawn in a battle between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. War
Food Administration. After that was resolved, the Board ran smoothly, and effectiveness increased. Its major achievement was the multi-nation commodity committees that it set up in 1945, which became the International Emergency Food Council. It tried to organize responses to a massive shortage of food in war-torn areas. It closed in 1946.
Mission
The mission of the Combined Food Board set out by Roosevelt and Churchill was twofold:
Operations
William Mabane, the
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Food, explained to Parliament in May 1943 that, "Food strategy was no mere domestic matter, and a scramble between the United Nations for supplies would be disastrous. Combined Food Board machinery had therefore been set up to prevent competitive buying of foodstuffs in short supply and remove any grievance that one country was going short while there was a surplus elsewhere."
The biggest problem was in limited shipping space in convoys bringing foods from the Western Hemisphere, especially with the heavy demands on shipping imposed by the landings in North Africa in November, 1942. There was barely enough space for bringing in even grain for current needs.
Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, urgently called on Britons to eat more potatoes and less bread. He introduced the
National Loaf that used much less shipping space, but which consumers could barely stomach.
Angus Calder
Angus Lindsay Ritchie Calder (5 February 1942 – 5 June 2008) was a Scottish writer, historian, and poet. Initially studying English literature, he became increasingly interested in political history and wrote a landmark study on Britain during t ...
, ''The People's War: Britain 1939-45'' (1969) pp 276-77
See also
*
Combined Production and Resources Board The Combined Production and Resources Board was a temporary World War II government agency that allocated the combined economic resources of the United States and Britain. It was set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston ...
*
Minister of Food (United Kingdom)
The Minister of Food Control (1916–1921) and the Minister of Food (1939–1958) were British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. In the Great War the Ministry sponsored a network of canteens known as ...
*
Rationing in the United Kingdom
Rationing was introduced temporarily by the British government several times during the 20th century, during and immediately after a war.
At the start of the Second World War in 1939, the United Kingdom was importing 20 million long tons of ...
*
Notes
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Further reading
* Hall, H. Duncan. ''North American supply'' (History of the Second World War; United Kingdom civil series: War production series) (1955), the British perspective
* Hayward, Edwin J. "Co-Ordination of Military and Civilian Civil Affairs Planning," ''Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'' Vol. 267, Military Government (Jan., 1950), pp. 19–2
in JSTOR* Roll, Eric. ''The Combined Food Board. A study in wartime international planning'' (1956).
* Rosen, S. McKee. ''The combined boards of the Second World War: An experiment in international administration'' (Columbia University Press, 1951)
** review by Harold Stein, ''American Political Science Review'' (1951) 45#4 pp. 1173–118
in JSTOR* Willoughby, William R. "The Canada‐United States joint economic agencies of the second world war," ''Canadian Public Administration'' (1972) 15#1 pp: 59-73.
United Kingdom–United States relations
Military logistics of World War II