Fighting Hunger—a Changing View?

In 1966, the large increase in wheat acreage allotments was seen by many as the beginning of a reversal of trend in farm policy. By the end of 1967 that interpretation seemed dubious. During that year, the Secretary of Agriculture removed from production more than half the wheat acreage he had added in 1966. By so doing he left little doubt that his eyes were fixed on farm prices, income, and the level of stocks. The theme of raising the per capita food consumption of the less developed countries, resounding in the official statements of 1966, was low-keyed in 1967.

In his February 1966 congressional testimony on the "World War on Hunger," Mr. Freeman called it "morally unacceptable" that it might take three decades to bring calorie consumption levels in the hungry countries to minimum standards, and favored finding means to achieve this goal in the one decade. But in 1967 he emphasized considerations of "effective demand" and "productive capacity."

Not that expressions of concern diminished. Food needs, how to meet them, and the role the United States should play in such an effort continued to be discussed by governments, international agencies, private organizations, and individual scholars.

While on so complex a subject one would hardly expect consensus, the diversity of views in 1967 is disconcerting. Some observers felt sufficiently pessimistic (or, in their judgment, realistic) to see famine close at hand; others contented themselves with noting troubling trends; and others yet pointed to the timely arrival of ample monsoon rains in India and the rising rate of birth control acceptance as harbingers of diminishing pressure on food supplies.

It was only a year ago that the President commented in his State of the Union Message: "Next to the pursuit of peace, the really greatest challenge to the human family is the race between food supply and population increase. That race tonight is being lost." Little has happened since to alter that view. The World Food Supply Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee, in its June 1967 report, spoke of the "grim reality of the food shortage that will occur during the next 20 years ... before programs of family planning can be expected to bring about long-term amelioration of the problem by reducing world population growth."

Yet a more relaxed mood now prevails, an example of which is to be found in a press release of August 23, 1967, announcing the findings of a new Department of Agriculture study (World Food Situation, Prospects for World Grain Production, Consumption, and Trade). Here Secretary Freeman noted that "the research agency found that world food production capacity should be able to meet world food needs in 1980." In a separate letter the Secretary called specific attention to the following two sections of the new study:

1. "The combined excess of food production capacity of all the developed countries in 1980 will be more than adequate to provide for the increased food import needs of the less developed countries. This is likely even if the less developed countries do not improve their rates of growth in grain production.

2. "The world food problem is basically one of disparity of food production and food availability between the developing and the developed nations. It is inseparable from the development gap between rich and poor nations."

What has happened between the early and late months of 1967? Primarily, two things. First, following the government's midsummer 1966 exhortation to farmers to greatly increase their wheat production, wheat growers did just that (though not to the full extent desired by the Department). But since no provision has been made to extend price assistance to the additional wheat beyond the bare loan level of $1.25 per bushel, the appearance of the nearly 250 million bushels of wheat by which the 1967 crop exceeded that of 1966 sent prices down and famers' tempers up.

In mid-1967, when this additional wheat hit the market, the Department advised farmers to practice "more active orderly marketing" and "restraint ... in the quantities of a commodity moving into the market at any one time" (Agriculture 1967: A Situation Report, by Orville L. Freeman, August 30, 1967). To make sure that the 1967 experience would not be repeated in 1968, however, the government cut back the wheat acreage allotment by 9 million acres.

Second, halfway around the globe, weather, new technology, and appropriate economic policies appear to have joined in producing, after two disastrous dry seasons, the largest cereal crop in India's experience. New strains of wheat and rice, on which rides much of the hope for eventual food adequacy, have not yet been used on a scale large enough to have great impact on total crops, but where used they have performed impressively. In addition, much more fertilizer is being used, and a larger share of the government budget is earmarked for agriculture.

Though official Indian targets of independence from cereal imports by 1970-71 seem optimistic, the country may well have crossed the threshold of a sustained payoff from past investment in new technology adapted to local conditions and accompanied by new institutions and policies. Since India has been the hard core of concern in the area of US food aid policy, the 1967 improvement moves the official observer no less than did the near disasters of the two preceding years.

The department's recent world food study, quoted above, provides theoretical support for the new mood of relaxation toward world food needs. But it does so by significantly altering the ground rules—a hazardous business when there is so much confusion.

Its rationale rests largely on abandoning specified nutritional levels as targets to be reached in a given time span, and substituting estimates of future effective demand based on prospective changes in income. As the study explains, "only when the rate of increase in grain production [in developing countries] accelerates to 4 percent per year by 1975 and continues at that rate will the less developed countries meet average minimum calorie standards by 1980." This rate of growth "is viewed as most unlikely."

But, as the President's Science Advisory Committee has aptly put it, "a low level of income would only generate a low 'effective demand' for food. On that basis no real world food gap can ever exist in a strictly economic sense. A poor Indian earning only the equivalent of $0.28 (U.S.) a day can spend at most about 25 cents on food considering his other consumption needs. The economic results of a low rate of growth of income for the developing world may be malnutrition or even famine and mass starvation."

In this changeover of assumptions, aims, and findings, one naturally looks for areas of agreement on both facts and outlook. There are probably two on fact: (1) No direct evidence as yet suggests that food consumption or nutritional levels have risen in the past eighteen months, though food availability in India might show an increase in 1967-68. (2) Nothing has happened since 1966 to suggest that the food gap in 1980 or 1985 might be narrower than it was then, with whatever deficiencies, calculated.

As for the outlook, three areas of agreement remain much as they have been: (1) Eventually, and the sooner the better, the burden of filling the food gap must be shifted to the countries in which it occurs. (2) This task is exceedingly hard, time-consuming, and requires basic changes in attitudes and institutions, both in the developed and less developed countries. (3) Anything that can be done to slow down population growth and thus raise per capita supplies is highly worth doing; but this, too, has a long time-horizon, during which food aid, judiciously dispensed, can ease the strain.

What the US experience of 1966-67 seems to have demonstrated, however, is the overriding importance of domestic farm prices and income. The downplaying of world food needs coincides with a summer during which grain production was plentiful, prices declined, and a renewed buildup of stocks was a distinct possibility if the output trend continued. Thus, a sharp cut-back in wheat acreage, reintroduction of diversion payments for feed grains, liberal provisions for keeping grain out of the market, and governmental admonitions of "orderly marketing" are intended to bolster prices. So is the recently reported quickening of the food aid flow. The Administration's efforts to have Congress vote into being a permanent grain reserve, unsuccessful in the last session, stems from the same desire.

In all this, the view taken of world food needs is of interest, but not a controlling factor, and studies to bolster one view rather than another are likely to come and go in the future as they have done in the past. The conclusion is clear: that no Administration can long afford to take its eyes off farm prices, income, and supplies, actual or potential.

The US farm economy remains a powerful engine when fed additional fuel, as the record of 1967 harvest has once again demonstrated. Unless food aid programs are set for the longer run and divorced from short-term policies, we had better get used to seeing one rationale, in matters of the food/population race, adjusted to the needs of the domestic market, no matter how sophisticated the explanatory footnotes.|