1630 



sufficiently advanced that the age-old problem of feeding the world's 

 people is technically solvable, famine still occurs. Food and people are 

 unevenly distributed over the globe. The undertaking in the study 

 by Dr. Allan S. Nanes is to explore the reasons why the technical 

 balancing of the food/population equation, although feasible, remains 

 unachieved. 



Since about 1950 the United States has maintained a substantial 

 program of aid to developing countries. Two main elements of this 

 program have been the strengthening of institutions and measures of 

 enhancing food production and public health. Although agricultural 

 productivity has risen, the death rate has declined and populations 

 have increased so that despite the efforts of the developing countries, 

 with U.S. aid, to improve their food/population positions, the effect 

 is that of being on a treadmill — or worse. The impact of inflation and 

 the raising of petroleum prices by OPEC has intensified the plight of 

 many developing countries. As the problem is summed up by Robert S. 

 McNamara, president of the World Bank: 



. . . Roughly half the population — in the developing world — are neither con- 

 tributing significantly to economic growth nor sharing equitably in its benefits. 

 These are the poor. Within most developing societies, they form a huge group at 

 the lower end of the income spectrums, receiving only a fraction of what the 

 middle- and upper-income groups do. 



Some 900 million of these individuals subsist on incomes of less than $75 a year 

 in an environment of squalor, hunger, and hopelessness. They are the absolute 

 poor, living in situations so deprived as to be below any rational definition of 

 human decency. Absolute poverty is a condition of life so limited by illiteracy, 

 malnutrition, disease, high infant-mortality, and low life-expectancy as ^o deny 

 its victims the very potential of the genes with which they are born. In effect, 

 it is life at the margin of existence. '^^ 



As these vast deprived populations struggle for sustenance, the 

 technology of the developed world has enabled it to produce large 

 surpluses of food, and to elect by conscious choice the kind of lifestyle 

 it wdll adopt. The division of the world into rich and poor nations is 

 increasingly a source of bitter resentment at international forums 

 where the subjects of environment, energy, materials, food, and popu- 

 lation are discussed with animus and frustration by spokesmen for a 

 majority of the world's sovereign states. 



It is in this context, in which diplomacy, technology, and human 

 institutions are closely intertwined, that the study Beyond Malthas 

 attempts to define the issue of the food/population equation, its 

 importance, and its significance for future American foreign policy. 



Statement of the Issue 



The implication of the food/population equation is that mankind 

 must somehow contrive to produce enough but not too much food 

 to feed the world's population, while providing incentives and means 

 for the world's population to hold itself within reasonable bounds. 

 Beyond this dual task is the further task of assuring the development 

 of a system of distribution of food to meet human needs, and a political 

 and economic structure to assure stability of the whole process. 



•52 Robert S. McNamara, Address to the Board of Governors, International Bank for Reconstruction and 

 Development, Washington, Sept. 1, 1975, p. 13. ' ' 



