conclusion was that `the need for adequate stockholding to meet temporary and
local food shortages is likely to recur, in underdeveloped countries, for quite a
considerable number of years'.
oping countries: the high degree of vulnerability to instability of food supplies;
commercial interests could not be expected to hold large enough stocks or to sell
them readily when local shortages developed; and imports took time and could not
be relied upon to solve all the problems that called for immediate availability of
supplies. (A fourth argument, the need for national food reserves to prevent sudden
large calls on a country's foreign exchange reserves for imports, was dismissed as
`rather academic' as developing countries usually did not succeed in setting aside
sufficient savings from their own resources for building up an adequate buffer of
any kind, whether financial or physical.) The main uses of national food reserves,
as set out in UN General Assembly resolution 1025 (XI) calling for the study, were
examined.
government in the afflicted country. Effective relief required an early `first-line'
defence with the help of physical stocks in hand. Three types of emergencies
could occur: sudden, natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes;
slower-maturing emergencies arising from food shortages caused by drought, crop
failure, pests and diseases; and man-made emergencies arising from war and civil
strife resulting in refugees and displaced persons. In a number of countries there
was a perennial and serious danger of emergencies caused by nature. In others,
there could be the lethal combination of more than one type of emergency,
resulting in a sudden demand for emergency relief. Safeguards in the form of local
food reserves were therefore very desirable and perhaps essential. Some districts
in a country, especially in a large country with considerably different climatic
conditions, were more liable to crop failures than others. A government should
take into consideration, on the basis of past experience, which areas were most
vulnerable to shortages, and to what extent, in deciding on the magnitude and
location of food reserves.
Excessive price fluctuation was harmful to the economy as a whole as well as to
agricultural producers and consumers, and could distort the pattern of economic
activity and investment. But stability of food prices was not the same thing as
stabilization of farmers' incomes. Some rise in prices may be desirable when there
is a short crop both to economize in consumption and to give farmers some