Food for the Future: A Perspective

Abstract

The early and middle years of decade of 1960s were a period of significant concern about prospective adequacy of world food supplies. Production shortfalls in grain-the major source of calories for world-occurred in China, Soviet Union, and South Asia. By 1965 therewas serious concern about possibility of mass starvation in South Asia, and there may have been severe food stringencies, including famine, in China in early years of decade. In United States, President's Science Advisory Committee undertook a major study and issued a major two-volume report, The World Food Problems, in 1967.1 Numerous Congressional hearings were held. By time The World Food Problems was published, however, world food situation had eased substantially, grain exports were declining, and world grain stocks were increasing. The rapid spread of new highyielding varieties of rice and wheat in South Asia led at least one prominent government official to announce in late 1968 that the world has recently entered a new agricultural era attributed to the sweeping advances in food production in several major developing countries.2 The rapid change in availability of world grain supplies and sharp increase in grain reserves in years following 1967 led industrial countries and most developing countries to turn their attention to other and seemingly more pressing problems. As a result, in period from 1967 through 1972 little was done, at least as a matter of conscious policy, that would contribute to a sustainable increase in per capita food supplies in developing countries. Will world's policy makers behave