This is an indirect way in which forestry helps food production. There are direct ways also. In cultivated areas the plantation of windbreaks and shelterbelts, which take up a negligible percentage of the cropland, can increase yields by 10 to 20 percent in favorable years, and from next to nothing to a normal yield in drought years. After the first establishment expenditure these plantations cost nothing, since the cost of maintenance is offset by the products of thinning, and the sacrifice of cropland is more than offset by increase in yield. For instance, the great Indian desert is marching eastward, absorbing about 800 square kilometers of cropland every year.
Protective plantations are the only effective defense against such encroachment.
The same is true of sand dunes which, unless they are fixed by a good vegetative cover, gradually advance on neighboring land. Above all, however, freedom from hunger cannot be attained without money, without investments, without imports of goods and materials. The earnings from forestry, and especially from state forests, can help in the provision of both the cash and the stimulus toward development. It is this philosophy which underlies the Organization's program of work in forestry and forest products for 1964 and 1965 to be proposed to the next session of the Conference of FAO at Rome in November 1963. The rising needs of an expanding economy must be met from ample supplies of suitable wood at reasonable prices.