temporary organizations dealing with food, nations would be able to cope with
the emergencies arising after the end of hostilities and that reasonable conditions
would soon be established in which FAO could start its work. But the food situ-
ation continued to deteriorate. In February 1946, the UN General Assembly called
on governments and international organizations concerned with food and agri-
culture to make `special efforts'. FAO's response was to convene a `Special Meeting
on Urgent Food Problems', which met in Washington, DC in May 1946. While
primarily concerned with the immediate problems of emergency food supplies,
the meeting also called for `longer term machinery to deal with certain practical
international problems connected therewith' and requested the director-general
of FAO:
Denmark in September 1946] a survey of existing and proposed interna-
tional organizations designed to meet long-term problems concerned with the
production, distribution, and consumption of food and agricultural products,
including the risk of accumulating surpluses; [and]
as necessary.
and miracles' he had spoken about in this address at the first FAO Conference
in Quebec City after his election as FAO director-general, and his proposal for a
`World Food Board' (WFB) (FAO, 1946a). It is difficult now to appreciate the full
impact the experiences of the previous three decades had had on Body Orr and his
FAO staff when drafting the WFB proposal. The triple impact in North America
and Europe of dramatically falling agricultural prices and incomes, the general
economic slump, and the rapid rise in large-scale unemployment had created
widespread depression and mass poverty. The political drift both to the right and
the left in search for solutions had led to the New Deal and isolationism in the