placed on agricultural infrastructure, and on distributional, institutional and
administrative aspects. It was also recognized that because of the operation of
market forces and other economic factors, the economic and social welfare of
the rural population depended largely on the buying power of others. On all
these matters, thinking in FAO was influenced by the FFHC as the content
and direction of FFHC itself were influenced by what emerged from these
independent studies.
Congress, the high point in the FFHC, which was held in Washington, DC in
June 1963 (Sen, 1982, pp. 1504). He invited 28 world-renowned personalities,
including several Nobel Prize winners, whose concern for the problem of hunger
was well known, to Rome on 14 March 1963 with the objective of `bringing their
moral authority to bear on the aims and purposes' of the FFHC. This `Special
Assembly on Man's Right to Freedom from Hunger' as it was called was also
intended to provide a dramatic opening for the `World Freedom for Hunger
Week', which followed immediately after. As Sen put it, not since the FFHC had
been launched had such a range of interest been displayed in the problem of
world hunger, nor had such a forceful analysis of the problem been presented
from a single platform. The pronouncements of this group of eminent men and
women showed a penetrating awareness of the social and political implications
of many hundreds of millions of people being condemned to a life of hunger
and poverty.
tion keep pace with population growth within a framework of rational planning?
Enough scientific knowledge and technological experience were available to bring
about an agricultural revolution in the developing countries, but could this know-
ledge be applied within a social and institutional framework that had held up
progress through its own inertia? Could external aid by itself be effective in stim-
ulating economic growth in the absence of world commodity agreements that
guaranteed fair and stable prices for the primary products of developing countries?
Could the current inadequate levels of investment in development be significantly
increased without drastically cutting down through international agreements the
astronomical scale of expenditure on armaments? The manifesto stated:
we suggest urgent and adequate national and international effort in which the
Governments and the people are associated. More particularly, we desire to
draw attention to the colossal waste of resources in the piling up of more and
new forms of armaments and the immense assistance to the Campaign against
Hunger that even a partial diversion of these funds could achieve. We feel that