Food and Agriculture Organization

The Acting Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Herbert Broadley, stated in his forward to the annual report for 1956 that the world food and agricultural situation had in recent years tended to change less rapidly than it had during the years of postwar recovery. It had therefore been decided to modify the form of the annual report, giving less emphasis to the current situation and short-term outlook and more to longer-term problems and to other special subjects. In reviewing the world situation and outlook, the report stated that during 1955/56 world production had continued to increase, reaching a level some 3 percent higher than in 1954/55. Increases had been greatest in North America and Oceania, the regions already most troubled by surpluses, but apart from a substantial gain in the Far East, production in the other regions had shown little change and in some cases had declined. Demand for agricultural products had been stimulated throughout the world during the period under review by the boom in industrialized countries; broadly speaking, there had been a tendency towards decreased prices for agricultural raw materials and some strengthening in the prices of foodstuffs. An increase of about 5 percent in the volume of world trade and agricultural commodities had occurred during 1955, with more than half of the increase due to larger western European imports. World trade in agricultural products was still, however, only 5 percent above the 1934–1938 level, in contrast to a rise of 70 percent in the volume of world trade as a whole. The total addition to stocks by the end of 1955/56 appeared to have been fairly modest, the report stated.