COLIN CLARK 
that there is not enough food in the world’’. There is unfor- 
tunately a considerable element of truth in this accusation; 
though it is also true, as The Economist went on to say, that FAO 
‘gives much useful practical advice and assistance”’ regarding 
food production and distribution throughout the world. 
One of the most valuable tasks which FAO has undertaken 
has been to organize the preparation, by a group of the leading 
physiologists in this field, of thorough and agreed studies of 
what are, in fact, people’s food requirements, measured in 
calories, under varying circumstances; the first of these? was 
published in 1950, and an improved and enlarged version# in 
1957. This report provides the basis for the calculations given 
below. 
A similar attempt by FAO (1957) to obtain a report on the 
quantity and composition of man’s protein requirements was 
inconclusive’. However, a community even at the lowest levels 
of agricultural productivity, living predominantly on cereals, 
even coarse cereals such as barley, maize, sorghum or millet, 
if they have enough calories, will also receive enough 
protein, though this is not the case with peoples living pre- 
dominantly on root crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, yams 
and taro. 
There is no doubt that shortages of vitamins and minerals in 
the diet may have serious effects upon health, and may some- 
times be fatal. It is generally agreed, however, that such 
shortages are not very likely to arise in a primitive nomadic or 
peasant community whose food, though scanty, is nevertheless 
obtained directly from natural sources. 
In May 1961, Dr. Sukhatme, FAO’s own Director of 
Statistics, in a paper to the Royal Statistical Society in London®, 
made a skilful mathematical analysis of the limited information 
available on the distribution of food consumption and con- 
cluded that the proportion of the world’s population which was 
hungry was 10 to 15 per cent. Discussion by an expert audience 
confirmed this conclusion, subject to the possibility that the 
extent of hunger in China might be rather greater, and in the 
rest of Asia rather less, than Dr. Sukhatme had stated. 
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