UN General Assembly
1978

16. Great hopes were placed in the so-called miracle rice developed in the Philippines and on the high-yielding wheat strains developed in Mexico. But that optimism turned out to be short-lived. In 1972, for a variety of complex reasons, total food production fell for the first time in more than 20 years. 17. We now realize that the comforting statistics of earlier years concealed a number of unpleasant facts about world grain production. The food demands of the third world were met less by the output of the developing countries themselves than by the increased output of wealthy countries like the United States, Canada, Australia and Argentina. Those countries were able to do this because their farming was on a vast scale, highly scientific, highly capitalized and highly organized. It was also energy- intensive so that, say, one American farmer could feed 57 people whereas a farmer in a developing country would be hard put to it to feed his own family.