U.S. STUDIES WORLD FOOD

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30849, 7 September 1965, Page 15

U.S. STUDIES WORLD FOOD

(From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A Special Correspondent J WASHINGTON, September 6.

Big changes are expected soon in the Administration’s food-for-peace programme. This seems to be linked chiefly with an official study which shows that the world’s food production is losing the race with the population explosion.

The study covered nine countries in which this problem is most acute.

Two of them, India and Brasil, represent 60 per cent of the population of all developing nations and between them receive the bulk of American surplus food shipments overseas.

The study says that even if these two nations can curb their high birth-rate by as much as a third they could face serious famine conditions within 10 years. The Administration is re-

ported to be ready to use surplus food here as one-half of a carrot-and-stick policy to get under-developed nations to adopt a two-headed policy of population control and improvement in agriculture. A possible third factor is that American farm surpluses are not going to decrease as had been hoped by the Department of Agriculture. The 1965 Farm Bill represents one of the very few defeats Mr Johnson has taken at the hands of Congress. The Secretary of Agriculture said he would never bow down to the bread trust but Congress succumbed to the persuasions of the bread lobby and the Administration saved face by accepting a re-written version of the bill with the best grace it could. One meaning of it is that the new bill will do little or nothing to curb food surpluses which have been a governmental headache for a generation. More food will be shipped abroad under the American food for peace programme, state reports in the press. The government study says that during the last five years the percentage of increase in population nearly doubled the

percentage of increase in food production. Before 1940 some of the developing countries exported grain. Now they are importing grain and last year 25 million tons of grain was shipped by the haves to the have-nots, an increase of 50 per cent in five years. But in spite of those shipments the hungry are eating less. But the “have” countries cannot do this indefinitely for their own populations are increasing and their food needs with them.

At Pearl Harbour the population of the United States was under 135 million. This year it passed the 195 million mark.

There are other factors. If the United States put its entire acreage into production it could probably, say the experts, come close to eliminating the world’s food deficit but eventually reproduction and then transportation would write a price tag that would become unbearable.

Population experts believe j that the number of births in the world must be reduced by not less than 20 million a year and perhaps by as much as 40 million to bring people and food resources into rea-

sonable balance. Some countries point out that the industrially developed countries are not limiting poplation and have not birth control programmes or policies; the United States is notable among such countries. From that they argue that the highly developed countries consider the others inferior, and have a desire to see there are plenty of “us” and fewer of “them.” In brief they think and say. that the United States is interested only in lowering the birth-rate among nonAmericans.

The press reports that plans are being considered by which food-for-peace shipments, already 1,500,000,000 dollars a year, would rise by 300 per cent by 1975. This, it is said, would mean massive investment in expanding shipping, storage and distribution facilities, which would increase the political dependence of developing countries on the United States I for survival. An alternative is for fooddeficit countries to raise their annual rate of increase in food output by not less than 2.5 per cent a year over ten years.