UN General Assembly
1980

145. Another problem which I should like to take up here and which has a special significance and importance concerns agriculture and food. Here again there is a distressing gap between the needs of the international community and its achievements. The developing countries have two thirds of the world population and represent 91 per cent of the agricultural jobs, but produce only 44 per cent of the food of the world. A billion human beings living in 40 countries with a permanent food deficit are in danger of dying if the shortages are prolonged; 450 million human beings are chronically underfed—and all this at a time when the world continues to allot $1 million a minute to military expenses.