Food on the World Scale
Nobody has ever accused the Food and Agriculture Organisatien of lacking breadth of vision. The proposal advanced by Mr. Norris Dodd, its Director-General, at the opening of the annual confereEce in Washington on Monday for an International Commodity Clearing House was as wide in its sweep as the speeches in which Lord Bo)d- Orr had previously appealed for a vast expansion of world feud production. But it stood no chance whatever of acceptance, even before President Truman, speaking on Tuesday, gently pushed it aside. The great truths need to be stated. More than half the world's population lives on the verge of starvation. It is tragic and fantastic that the better-fed countries, including the United States, should once again be turning to the restriction of production because the hungrier countries cannot afford to pay for what they so sorely need. It is too easy to forget these gigantic offences to humanity. Certainly the F.A.O. should never forget them. But equally certainly it should do much more than merely remember them, and it cannot be claimed that by proposing vast and hopeless remedies it goes very far along the road to a practical solution. If the United States Government could be persuaded to make its consumable surpluses available at low prices to the poorer parts of the world—or even if it could afford to—the dollar problem would disappear at once. But it will not be persuaded by ambitious speeches. It will only move cautiously, but steadily, along the right road, if the F.A.O. goes on ahead with more limited and practical projects for raising the productive efficiency of the backward areas themselves. This is not a circular argument. It is not quite true to say that there can be no advance in the backward areas until their populations are given cheap imported food. A small advance can be made by expanding from within the centres of rela- tively efficient production. Such an advance may be slow, but it is cumulative and sure, and, what is most to the point, it is within the capacity of the F.A.O. to start it.
Previous page
