Pragmatism and Politics

MAC/WFY

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248

197090. The World Food Crisis of the 1970s and its Aftermath

their negative effects on the food security of the poor (FAO, 1989). Likewise,
the world had left unanswered the question of how best to be prepared for any
widespread occurrence of crop failures. The third problem, which was becoming
more serious, was the protection of agricultural resources and the environment
from pollution and degradation, for which there was more publicity than action.
Agriculture was also very much involved in the external debt problem of many
developing countries, and efforts to slow the rate of urbanization, and with the
location of industries outside urban centres. Finally, there remained `the complex
and acute problem' of rehabilitating agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and avoiding
the recurrence of famines or minimizing their impacts.

World agriculture: towards 2000

Saouma decided to continue FAO's work of exploring the future of world agri-
culture `in as realistic way as possible', while avoiding the trap into which the
IWP had fallen in what he called `diffuse planning'. He therefore conceived the
idea of publishing a major study on world agriculture that would have the dual
purpose of constituting FAO's contribution towards the preparation by the UN of
a new international development strategy for the Third UN Development Decade
of the 1980s, and of helping FAO formulate its own policies and work programme.
The study relied on the usable components of the IWP, documents prepared for a
Perspective Study of World Agricultural Development, and the first reports of the
Club of Rome, which appeared in 1972, and which shed new light on the problem
of the limits to growth (Meadows, 1972).

The study, entitled World Agriculture: Toward 2000, took almost a decade to

complete, from the submission of a provisional version of the work to the
FAO Conference in 1979 to the presentation of the final version to the FAO
Conference in 1987, and its publication for wider readership in 1988 (Alexan-
dratos, 1988). Its purpose was to provide a perspective analysis of likely trends
in food and agriculture up to the end of the century. Saouma presented the
provisional version of the study to FAO Conference delegates in 1979 in the
following terms:

It is not, of course, a set of prophecies or predictions. We must at all times
remember that it is simply an analysis of the implications of a path of growth
derived from certain assumptions about demographic and economic growth
rates. The resultant data and situations represent what could happen if the
assumptions were in fact justified by experience. (Saouma, 1993, p. 54)

In other words, the results of the study were only as valid as the assumptions on
which it was based.

Three scenarios were drawn up. One was called a `trend scenario' because it was

based on a simple extrapolation of past trends in production and consumption.
As might be expected, it showed that the rift between rich and poor countries
would continue to widen and the number of malnourished and underfed would

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Useful links	Pragmatism and Politics MAC/WFY Page-248 0230_553559_24_cha20 248 197090. The World Food Crisis of the 1970s and its Aftermath their negative effects on the food security of the poor (FAO, 1989). Likewise, the world had left unanswered the question of how best to be prepared for any widespread occurrence of crop failures. The third problem, which was becoming more serious, was the protection of agricultural resources and the environment from pollution and degradation, for which there was more publicity than action. Agriculture was also very much involved in the external debt problem of many developing countries, and efforts to slow the rate of urbanization, and with the location of industries outside urban centres. Finally, there remained `the complex and acute problem' of rehabilitating agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and avoiding the recurrence of famines or minimizing their impacts. World agriculture: towards 2000 Saouma decided to continue FAO's work of exploring the future of world agri- culture `in as realistic way as possible', while avoiding the trap into which the IWP had fallen in what he called `diffuse planning'. He therefore conceived the idea of publishing a major study on world agriculture that would have the dual purpose of constituting FAO's contribution towards the preparation by the UN of a new international development strategy for the Third UN Development Decade of the 1980s, and of helping FAO formulate its own policies and work programme. The study relied on the usable components of the IWP, documents prepared for a Perspective Study of World Agricultural Development, and the first reports of the Club of Rome, which appeared in 1972, and which shed new light on the problem of the limits to growth (Meadows, 1972). The study, entitled World Agriculture: Toward 2000, took almost a decade to complete, from the submission of a provisional version of the work to the FAO Conference in 1979 to the presentation of the final version to the FAO Conference in 1987, and its publication for wider readership in 1988 (Alexan- dratos, 1988). Its purpose was to provide a perspective analysis of likely trends in food and agriculture up to the end of the century. Saouma presented the provisional version of the study to FAO Conference delegates in 1979 in the following terms: It is not, of course, a set of prophecies or predictions. We must at all times remember that it is simply an analysis of the implications of a path of growth derived from certain assumptions about demographic and economic growth rates. The resultant data and situations represent what could happen if the assumptions were in fact justified by experience. (Saouma, 1993, p. 54) In other words, the results of the study were only as valid as the assumptions on which it was based. Three scenarios were drawn up. One was called a `trend scenario' because it was based on a simple extrapolation of past trends in production and consumption. As might be expected, it showed that the rift between rich and poor countries would continue to widen and the number of malnourished and underfed would back to top Next page
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