The Development of Food Aid

MAC/WFY

Page-88

0230_553559_13_cha09

194570. Early Attempts: FAO's Pioneering Work

Committee (WUC), which served as a consultative body to the five governments
and maintained a close working relationship with FAO. The activities of the
WUC included making more effective use of wheat surpluses for the promotion
of economic development, co-ordination of disposal programmes for economic
development with other development activities, providing wheat to individual
countries on concessional terms and safeguarding commercial markets.

As pressures mounted, and the FFHC had its educational and public relations

effects, the idea of a multilateral food aid programme was born. During the presid-
ential election campaign of 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Party's
nominee for president, said in a speech in South Dakota on 22 September during
the presidential election campaign:

I don't regard

agricultural surplus as a problem. I regard it as an

opportunity

not only for our own people, but for people all around the

world

I think the farmers can bring more credit, more lasting good will, more

chance for freedom, more chance for peace, than almost any other group of
Americans in the next ten years, if we recognize that food is strength, and food
is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the
world whose good will and friendship we want. (McGovern, 1977, pp. 823)

Kennedy proposed holding an international conference on food and agricul-
ture, similar to the one convened by President Roosevelt at Hot Springs, Virginia
in 1943:

to deal on a constructive multilateral basis with the food needs of the world.
This conference should, of course, be held under the sponsorship, and in
cooperation with the United Nations Organization. This conference should
have as its specific goal the organization of an agency to undertake the transfer
of surplus food and fiber stocks from nations with surpluses to those nations in
desperate need of such supplies to combat hunger and to promote economic
development.

In a press release in October 1960, he added `pending such a conference and
the creation of a "world food agency", negotiate long-term agreements for donor
countries to supply food commodities for food-for-work schemes', clearly the
embryo of what turned out to be the UN World Food Programme.

The president

of the US National Farmers Union, James G. Patton, recommended that such a
conference be held for the specific purpose of setting up a new agency, under but
not in FAO, to administer a multilateral food aid operational programme for the
dual purpose of spurring faster economic growth in the developing countries and
at the same time building up the power of the United Nations in the attack on
world poverty.

The first public document containing a proposal for a multilateral food aid

facility appears, however, to have come not from Senator Kennedy but from
the then vice president, Richard M. Nixon, the Republican Party's nominee for

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Useful links	The Development of Food Aid MAC/WFY Page-88 0230_553559_13_cha09 88 194570. Early Attempts: FAO's Pioneering Work Committee (WUC), which served as a consultative body to the five governments and maintained a close working relationship with FAO. The activities of the WUC included making more effective use of wheat surpluses for the promotion of economic development, co-ordination of disposal programmes for economic development with other development activities, providing wheat to individual countries on concessional terms and safeguarding commercial markets. As pressures mounted, and the FFHC had its educational and public relations effects, the idea of a multilateral food aid programme was born. During the presid- ential election campaign of 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Party's nominee for president, said in a speech in South Dakota on 22 September during the presidential election campaign: I don't regard agricultural surplus as a problem. I regard it as an opportunity not only for our own people, but for people all around the world I think the farmers can bring more credit, more lasting good will, more chance for freedom, more chance for peace, than almost any other group of Americans in the next ten years, if we recognize that food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the world whose good will and friendship we want. (McGovern, 1977, pp. 823) Kennedy proposed holding an international conference on food and agricul- ture, similar to the one convened by President Roosevelt at Hot Springs, Virginia in 1943: to deal on a constructive multilateral basis with the food needs of the world. This conference should, of course, be held under the sponsorship, and in cooperation with the United Nations Organization. This conference should have as its specific goal the organization of an agency to undertake the transfer of surplus food and fiber stocks from nations with surpluses to those nations in desperate need of such supplies to combat hunger and to promote economic development. 35 In a press release in October 1960, he added `pending such a conference and the creation of a "world food agency", negotiate long-term agreements for donor countries to supply food commodities for food-for-work schemes', clearly the embryo of what turned out to be the UN World Food Programme. 36 The president of the US National Farmers Union, James G. Patton, recommended that such a conference be held for the specific purpose of setting up a new agency, under but not in FAO, to administer a multilateral food aid operational programme for the dual purpose of spurring faster economic growth in the developing countries and at the same time building up the power of the United Nations in the attack on world poverty. 37 The first public document containing a proposal for a multilateral food aid facility appears, however, to have come not from Senator Kennedy but from the then vice president, Richard M. Nixon, the Republican Party's nominee for back to top Next page
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