than in normal times. These extra holdings would be financed by borrowing on the
market against its commodity assets. Such operations would be greatest in times of
depression when funds would be available at advantageous rates. It was envisaged
that producers of livestock products and other perishables not suited to long-term
stock holding would find their markets stabilized by the buffer stocks operations on
feed grains and other items and enlarged through nutritional policies concurrently
developed. Certain livestock products capable of being stored for long periods
would be included directly in the buffer stock operations. The danger of compet-
itive export subsidization was recognized, which could destroy the international
stock holding programme. In such cases, schedules of export quotas could be
negotiated between governments until new markets were developed. This contin-
gency had been recognized and provided for in a similar way in the US proposal
for an ITO.
health standard. It was considered that the need for additional food was so great
that if human requirements were translated into economic demand, there would
be no question of surpluses of basic foods, which previously had been regarded as
inevitable and, which if permitted to re-emerge might overwhelm the WFB. The
basic problem was seen as one of increasing purchasing power of people who were
unable to obtain sufficient food for their needs. The WFB should, therefore, be able
to divert unmarketable surpluses to these consumers and arrange for financing
the cost of selling at prices that they could afford.
brought them together in one organization, which had the machinery and funds
to correlate them and take executive action to carry out an adequate world
food policy. The proposal warned that there were really only two alternatives:
co-operation for mutual benefit; or a drift back to nationalistic policies leading to
economic conflict `that might well be the prelude to a third world war that will
end our civilization'.
the next step should be the appointment of a committee to work out the details
and prepare a specific plan for setting up the WFB. The committee would be
requested to complete its report by the end of December 1946. Boyd Orr explained
that under normal conditions governments would have had more time to consider
the far-reaching WFB proposal, which was submitted to them within six months
of FAO being set up. But it was thought that delay would reduce the chance of its
acceptance. The fear was that the promise of the Atlantic Charter that Roosevelt
and Churchill had signed in 1941, of the `New and Better World' that Roosevelt
sought, of `the fuller life, the true and great inheritance of the common man'
that Churchill envisaged, `the relegation of poverty to the limbo of the past' that
Ernest Bevin, a member of Churchill's UK war cabinet, foresaw, and other similar
high hopes, `would be quickly forgotten' (Boyd Orr and Lubbock, 1953, p. 94).