The Solution Redefined: Agricultural Development, Human Rights, and Free Markets at the 1974 World Food Conference

Abstract

The international society—developing countries, the Global North, and NGOs—convened at the 1974 World Food Conference to manage the 1972–1973 food crisis, devising changes in world food policy. From a broad perspective, the changes were an auxiliary aspect of the political reformulations in the 1970s, reshaping the entire pattern of the global food system so that it was grounded in commercialization rather than food aid and development projects driven by nation-states. This study traces the way in which the idea of human rights reformulated the discourse on world food policy. Instead of state-sponsored agricultural development projects, the individual food needs of poorer people were emphasized, which, in turn, redefined global food security. Basic economic rights previously derived from human rights discourse and postcolonial aspirations were reformulated significantly after becoming rooted in Western intellectual soil. Human rights provided common ground between leaders, policy makers, and the public in developed and developing countries for devising the market priority program as a solution to the food crisis in the 1970s and beyond.