Assessment of the world food situation-present and future

The widespread bad harvests of 1972 in various regions of the world, the consequent reduction in grain reserves, the rapid rise in food prices almost everywhere and its impact on inflation, all have served to draw renewed attention to the problem of hunger which affects millions of human beings in the world today. During the 1974 United Nations World Food Conference many important matters relating to this problem were debated: the creation of international grain reserves; problems concerning world trade of foodstuffs; the current difficulties with certain key agricultural production factors, such as fertilizers; the necessity for organizing a worldwide information system on the situation; and prospects of various harvests and threats of famine in underdeveloped countries. It is often the case that discussion of the hunger problem does not correspond to the gravity of the crisis; true causes of the present situation are not examined, and measures are not adopted that will once and for all--for the first time--abolish hunger. In view of the prospect that the real issues are often ignored, the Transnational Institute provides this analysis in an attempt to clarify what must be done to abolish hunger in the belief that this is within the reach of humanity when and if we are determined to end the irrationalities of the present economic system and the relations of domination which some individuals and countries seek to continue.