Combined Food Board
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 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.