Strategies for Dealing with World Hunger: Post-World War II Policies

Farmers, farm politicians, and agricultural economists have something in common. Their products, whether food, laws, or theories, are dependent upon the weather. This is obvious in the case of farmers. Their product depends upon many things, including the state of the arts in agriculture in a particular region or nation, the availability of credit, the costs of energy and fertilizer, and so on, yet the overriding variable, with only limited exceptions, is weather. If the monsoons are favorable in India, the frost holds off in the Soviet Union, and timely rainfall comes to Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States, there is a world surplus of grain. Conversely, if weather conditions are unfavorable in these areas, the world faces shortages. If there are surpluses, politicians face the problem of establishing programs that will assure farmers reasonable incomes, reduce production, remove surpluses from the market and dispose of them, and bring about the retention of the politicians in office, all at little cost to the taxpayer. If there are shortages, the problems are still complex, with questions of export embargoes, high consumer prices, the maintenance of farm income, the stimulation of increased production that will ease shortages and not lead to surpluses, and the retention of the politicians in office, all at little cost to the taxpayer. The relationships between the weather and the agricultural economists is not so clear unless we accept and keep in mind the proposition that weather is the most important of all the variables in determining whether we have surpluses or shortages, or, indeed, whether we reach that golden mean where production equals effective demand. Thus, over the past thirty-five years since World War II, the dominant economic theory at any given moment has been, when surpluses were at hand, they th eatened to drag the economy down to disaster; or, if there were shortages, the world was threatened with starvation and wars over food supplies. Oddly enough, weather conditions, with their resulting surpluses or shortages, led some economists to make rather short and fast turnabouts. For the most part, though, it appears that economists belonging to two different schools of thought have taken turns explaining their theories and making their forecasts as world weather has changed. Because there is little we can do to bring about major changes in the weather, at least with present technologies, we will accept it as given, so far as this paper is concerned. Our pu pose will be, then, to look at the relationships between agricultural policies and programs as they relate to world food supply and to look at economic theories and forecasts because they have an effect on policies and programs. The programs and policies of many nations and of international organizations affect the world food supply, but our paper is limited to those of the United States, with some attention to the relationships of the United States to other nations and to international organizations. World War II ended with American farmers reaching the highest levels of food production ever in 1945 and 1946, yet world shortages threatened many people with starvation. Vocal American consumers, because of high incomes and rationing and shortages during the war, were calling for the removal of all Wayne D. Rasmussen and Jane M. Porter are historians in the National Economics Division, Economic Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.