Food and Agriculture Organization

The tenth session of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was held in Rome from October 31 through November 20, 1959. In its review of the world situation and oudook the Conference noted with satisfaction that in 1958 a 4 percent increase in world agricultural production had followed the temporary pause in expansion of the previous year, when harvests in many areas had been reduced by bad weather. The information available to the Conference indicated that world production would again rise in the 1959 season, though the increase would probably not be so great as in 1958, and that variable weather conditions were likely to result in considerable differences between regions and between individual commodities. The Conference expressed concern, however, over the fact that the greater part of the 1958 increase had been contributed by the technically advanced countries and that, apart from a substantial increase reported in mainland China, gains had generally been small in the less developed regions, where a rapid increase of agricultural production was urgently needed. In addition, much of the increase in production had not moved into consumption. The large cereal crops of 1958, especially in the United States, had led to a sharp rise in unsold stocks of wheat and coarse grains, and coffee and sugar stocks had also increased markedly. Thus, despite the existence of surplus stocks, the less developed countries could not afford to import sufficient food to ensure the adequate nutrition of their rapidly growing populations, and the problems of rural poverty and inadequate food supplies which characterized most of them could be overcome only by a build-up of dieir agricultures and a balanced development of their economies. Another adverse factor affecting the less developed countries had been the recession in economic activity in most of the industrialized countries in the two years since the previous session of the Conference, for the volume of exports of industrial raw materials had fallen by some 8 percent in 1958, thus decreasing the needed export earnings of the less developed countries. The Conference also expressed its concern at the slackening in the increase of production in relation to population, particularly in the less developed regions, during the last few years, as the average annual increase in world food production had recently been only about 0.5 percent above the average population growth of 1.6 percent, in contrast to the margin of some 1.5 percent that had been achieved in the earlier part of the postwar period.