The food and agriculture organisation

ABSTRACT RELATIVELY little publicity has been given in the Press or elsewhere to the activities of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, though from the various reports that it has issued a

great deal of essential preliminary work has evidently been accomplished. A staff of highly competent experts has been temporarily on loan from Government departments and other

international bodies for the purpose, though now a nucleus of permanent personnel is established, to which recruitment is to be made on as broad a geographical basis as possible. At the time

of its inauguration in November 1945, responsibility for dealing with the immediate post-war world shortage of food was in the hands of international organisations such as the United

Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the Combined Food Board and the Food and Agriculture Sub-committee. By the time that these bodies were due to go out of existence under the

arrangements already made, it was hoped that the worst of the food shortage would be over, and that the new authority would start to develop its plans under conditions approximating to those

of 1939. Its first task was, therefore, to assess the pre-war position in as many countries as possible as a guide to working out future policies. During the winter of 1945-46, however,

serious deterioration in the world's food supplies set in, and following an appeal for help, the Director-General agreed that the Food and Agriculture Organisation should undertake

responsibility for relieving the situation. A special meeting was called at Washington in May 1946, at which recommendations were made to Governments as to the best use of the 1946 harvest

and the ways in which still larger harvests could be secured in 1947. Allocation of foodstuffs, based on information and statistics provided by the Organisation, was delegated to a new

agency, the International Emergency Food Council. An inquiry was then called for to ascertain the adequacy of existing international institutions to meet long-term problems of production,

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ORGANISATION. _Nature_ 159, 211–213 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/159211a0 Download citation * Issue Date: 15 February 1947 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/159211a0 SHARE THIS ARTICLE

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