1631 



The complexity of the task of evening out the global inequities in 

 food supply and the unbalances in the food/population balance is 

 described by Dr. Nanes in the following passage : 



The problem of achieving a relatively stable balance between food resources 

 and population in the less developed countries is one of enormous complexity. 

 It has biological and medical aspects relating to the development and employment 

 of safe and effective methods of contraception. It involves decisions about basic 

 economic questions such as the allotment of resources, manpower needs, the 

 use of incentives, and the establishment of channels of distribution. It calls for 

 the modification of cultural and social values that have existed, in some cases, 

 for millennia. It affects the internal politics of the developing countries, and adds 

 to the strains on their relatively weak administrative machinery. It tests the ef- 

 fectiveness of communications techniques and training methods. It requires the 

 development of irrigation systems, intensive use of fertilizers, and in the view of 

 many experts the development of new crops even more responsive to fertilizers; 

 this in turn involves research in plant genetics. The depredation of food supplies 

 by animal and insect pests must be brought under control. Improved food pres- 

 ervation techniques need to be developed. Disease, which cuts down the caloric 

 efficiency of ingested foods, must be fought, so that ill health does not diminish 

 the supply of manpower during a planting season, or cause the loss of a crop. 

 In many instances a market economy must be developed where none existed 

 before. 



What needs to be done is virtually endless, and it is all interconnected. This 

 interconnection of very many diverse elements is characteristic of the entire 

 modernization process in the underdeveloped countries, and the solution of the 

 food/population equation is simply a specialized model of that process.^*^ 



Undoubtedly the central problem is the construction of political 

 and administrative arrangements to bring to bear the available 

 technologies that can overcome the physical dijSiculties in the global 

 food/population unbalance. Fortunately, genetic developments in food 

 grains (the so-called "Green Revolution") and a number of innovative 

 teclmologies to effect population control have come into being within 

 the present generation. "As matters now stand there is at least a 

 chance that development aid, abetted by a skillful and flexible diplo- 

 macy and working in conjunction with science and technology . . . 

 could help to bring about a reasonable equilibrium between population 

 and food resources in the so-called Third World." ^^ 



Importance of the Issue 



The issue should be restated in order to highlight its importance. 



As Nanes puts it : 



Rapidly advancing technology shows promise of enlarging world supplies of 

 food to m.eet completely the needs of the w'orld's burgeoning population. Tech- 

 nology has also demonstrated that it can be used to slow the rate of human 

 reproduction. On a global basis, mankind need no longer be the inevitable victim 

 of a postulated Malthusian law that condemns some fraction of the total number 

 to starvation or semi-starvation. The question now becomes one of skill in human 

 management: Can man so order liimself and his institutions of government and 

 administration that he can mate use of the food and population technologies he 

 has been permitted to discover? "• 



The moral aspect of upwards of a billion human beings on the 

 thresliold of starvation scarcely needs stressing. However, in a de- 

 veloping country the adverse consequences of an insuflBciency of 

 proper nutrition constitute a chain reaction that perpetuates the 

 underdeveloped state of the nation. Calorie deficiencies are measured 



153 Xanes, Beyond Malthus, vol. II, pp. 779-780. 

 '^ Ibid., p. 7S0. 

 1" /Wd.,p.8.55. 



