Politics and Poverty

A Critique of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

John Abbott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000124217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Originally published in 1992. At its foundation FAO was conceived as an organization that would bring together health and agriculture. It would manage the world's food output to greater advantage and improve the well-being of its people. Almost a half-century on, FAO faced mounting criticism from its major funding nations, professionals within the field, and developing countries. The efficacy of its constitution, bureaucracy and aid, and even its fidelity to original ideals are questioned. This book presents an informed, if irreverent, insider's view. The first part of the book sets out the structure and activities of FAO. It gives a human dimension, describing the personalities that have influenced decisions and performance, the motivations of its staff, its location in Rome. The second part appraises FAO'S success in achieving its ultimate objective the alleviation of poverty. Throughout, the concern is both for a more visionary organization to help develop a sustainable income base for the rural poor in the developing world.

1

INTRODUCTION

Storm clouds mar the ideal

In 1935 Frank McDougall, economic adviser to the Australian mission to the League of Nations, cabled the nutritionist Boyd Orr in Aberdeen: ‘We have today lighted such a candle, by God’s grace, in Geneva as we trust shall never be put out’. He was echoing the words of the religious martyr Hugh Latimer to his fellow protestant Ridley in 1555 as they were about to be burned at the stake.

Stanley Bruce, High Commissioner in .London and former Prime Minister of Australia, reacted against the prevailing view in the 1930s that the current surpluses of agricultural commodities could only be handled by cutting down production. Together Bruce, Boyd Orr, and McDougall had worked on ‘a marriage of health and agriculture’. McDougall had written a memorandum, ‘The Agricultural and Health Problems’. He said it would ‘argue a bankruptcy of statesmanship if it should prove impossible to bring together a great unsatisfied need for highly nutritious food and the immense potential production of modern agriculture’.

Bruce picked this up in an address to the League of Nations. The favourable reaction it received inspired McDougall’s famous telegram. Such was the feeling of the men who laid the basis for the establishment of FAO.

A Marriage Of Health And Agriculture

There had already been another man convinced from his own experience of the need to help the small-scale farmers of the world, who also had the vision and determination to put his ideas into effect. This man was David Lubin. He emigrated from Poland to the USA in the nineteenth century. There he farmed and became an agricultural merchant in California. The difficult working conditions experienced by farmers there during the depressions of 1880-90 made such an impression on him that he tried to set up some international mechanism to better their lot. This crusade led him to Italy, where he impressed King Victor Emmanuel III. In 1905 the King communicated to his Prime Minister that ‘it would be extremely useful to set up an international institute which, without any political design, would study the conditions of agriculture in the various countries of the world and periodically issue information on the quantity and quality of crops.’ This led to a conference in Rome and the signing by forty countries of a ‘Convention Establishing an International Institute of Agriculture’. It began its work in the Villa Borghese, Rome.

The Institute collected statistics, carried out studies, and gave out information. Bruce, McDougall, and Boyd Orr - all Scots by origin -went much further. They wanted to set up a body that would manage the world’s food resources, using its surpluses to the best advantage. However, influential world opinion still had to be convinced of the vital links between nutrition, agriculture, and economic development.

McDougall went to Washington in 1941 and 1942, representing Australia in negotiations for an international wheat agreement. Together with a group in the United States Department of Agriculture he wrote a further memorandum on ‘A United Nations Programme for Freedom from Want of Food’. This set out ideas on how governments might develop an organization to deal with food and agricultural problems. His next great moment came when Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt heard of his memorandum, met McDougall, and decided that his ideas were worth bringing to President Roosevelt’s attention. McDougall was invited to dinner. He seized the opportunity to outline his concept for an international agency concerned with food and agriculture. Thereafter came a long phase of deflation - McDougall heard no more. Only from a newspaper did he learn that in September 1943 President Roosevelt was going to invite the allied governments to hold their first conference on food and agriculture at Hot Springs, Virginia. This conference set up an interim commission which led to the establishment of FAO at a conference in Quebec on 16 October 1945. McDougall was a member of the Australian delegation to the conference, and he was appointed Counsellor to the FAO Director General - a role in which he continued until his death. His grave is well marked in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

At each biennial FAO governing conference an eminent statesman is invited to give the McDougall lecture, a tradition established in his honour.

Freedom From Hunger

A second phase of exaltation for FAO came in the 1960s with the election of Director General B.R. Sen. In addition to obtaining major increases in its budget (voted directly by member countries), FAO was assigned a leading role in the use of the greatly increased resources pledged to a UN Special Fund for Development. This enabled FAO to mount influential teams of technical advisers, and to organize large-scale training for its developing member countries, at a time when this assistance was highly appreciated. The bulk of its Third World members had just achieved their independence. They looked to FAO for an international frame of assistance in contrast to the single voice of their former colonial power.

In his autobiography (Sen 1982), Sen averred that his greatest satisfaction was the successful launching of the FAO Freedom from Hunger Campaign which established FAO as a vehicle for the use of aid funds contributed voluntarily by religious and other voluntary groups in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The funds they collected would support development projects that FAO would implement on their behalf. The 1960 conference of international non-governmental organizations gave FAO a new dimension as the world focus of voluntary development efforts in its field. A special assembly of eminent personalities in Rome in March 1963 issued their manifesto, ‘Man’s Right to Freedom from Hunger’.

A World Food Congress was held in Washington in June 1963. It was here that Sen also gained the support of developed countries’ industry concerned with food and agriculture. The FFHC Fertilizer Programme brought resources in kind and cash to FAO to implement field trials and demonstrations of fertilizer use. Food processing industries also offered collaboration in identifying and implementing practical development projects, lending experienced personnel, etc.

The FAO Indicative World Plan also stems from this Congress. The world wanted some indication of the magnitude of the food and food production resources that would be needed to match the expected growth in world population. The FAO projected figures for 1985 were the first ones developed in detail for a world development frame.

At this time FAO could also face up directly to the population control issue and call upon the Pope to help. To the Vatican argument that resources will always be found to meet the food needs of larger populations, Sen responded that they are not in practice available at particular places and times; poverty and famine can be the result.

Provision Of Food And Capital

Further great days for FAO saw the establishment of the UN/FAO World Food Programme and of the FAO Cooperative Programme with the World Bank. Back in the 1940s Boyd Orr, the first Director General of FAO, had foreseen these needs. He wanted the FAO itself to be able to supply food where people needed it in order to survive. He wanted to be able to finance the provision of infrastructure, equipment, fertilizers, and other inputs for expanded and more productive agricultural and fishery operations. At the time his ideas were thought premature. In 1961 the World Food Programme was established in Rome as a joint arm of FAO and the United Nations. Its goals were to make surplus food available to avert famine, and also to pay for labour on projects to improve rural infrastructure and on other development activities.

A.H. Boerma became the first executive director of the World Food Programme. His experience at the end of World War II trying to organize food supplies for a poverty-stricken Netherlands had made him an advocate of a ‘world food bank’. His elation at this appointment was great indeed.

Shortly thereafter Sen made his historic agreement with George Woods, President of the World Bank. Up to this point its level of lending for agriculture in the developing world had been limited. Woods, however, saw the need for a greatly expanded flow of capital into Third World agriculture. On hearing this, Sen recalls, ‘I took a plane to New York to meet him.’ The outcome was an arrangement whereby FAO would identify and prepare potential projects for financing. The World Bank would appraise and supervise them. It undertook to contribute two-thirds of the cost of a team of specialists located in FAO that would concentrate on agricultural and fisheries work for the World Bank. With the pledging of funds for a parallel International Development Association programme to serve countries unable to meet commercial interest rates, this opened the way to a massive channelling of new capital into Third World agriculture. The array of development instruments was now complete, with FAO at the centre.

Dedicated Staff And Volunteers

Morale was high in FAO throughout the 1960s - at all levels. There was strong competition for all posts as they became vacant. From the UK, especially, young people joined FAO at levels far below their qualifications because they saw its work as exciting, with good prospects; they were pleased to talk about FAO and to be part of it.

My recollection of my own feelings on joining FAO is still vivid. I first heard about the Organization through a talk at my university by Boerma, then its Director of Economics. He set out its scope of work and objectives. Then he appealed to young men and women to give up narrowly circumscribed, over-staffed fields of work in the libraries and laboratories of industrial countries’ universities, and take up instead the challenge of helping the developing world. I was hooked. At the reception which followed he said there would be work in FAO in my field and encouraged me to apply for a post. When the reply to my application came - positive - a great warmth surged through me. My wife saw it and marched off into the woods - she knew she had lost me.

I then tried to inform myself about FAO and its place of work. The first indications were none too encouraging. My only contact was a graduate student friend who had done a year at FAO and then left. He did not like it. In conversation, he said that the only good thing he saw in FAO was that it was an easy drive to the beach; one could get there conveniently for a swim after work. He went on to become Director of Agriculture and Rural Development at the World Bank. I had also heard tell how an FAO representative had parked his car outside a hotel in Rome for an official luncheon. When he came out, it was set up on bricks - minus its wheels. I talked in a bar in Sacramento to a waiter who came from Rome. ‘What kind of a place is it now?’ I asked. ‘There are some good night clubs there’, he said, ‘but not much else’.

Figure 1 The FAO emblem

My old professor at Oxford also held a negative attitude toward FAO. ‘They will take you for a year or two, draw out any ideas you have, then drop you like a squeezed-out lemon,’ he said. I later found the squeezing could be mutual and productive. FAO, it is true, wanted my ideas for a manual on agricultural marketing improvement in the developing countries. At the same time, it put so much information at my disposal, and such rich opportunities to gather experience, that I felt myself steadily enriched by the exchange.

My work was tremendously exciting. It gave me a chance to exercise in combination my professional training, my practical management talents, and my engrossing interest in the developing world. People throughout the developing countries appreciated the seminars and training programmes we organized. In seven or eight languages they read our books at the policy-making level, in colleges and for use in extension work. The books were cheaply priced and sold by the tens of thousands. Many who read them were from countries where we helped to develop their own services in our technical field, helped strengthen their agricultural economies, provided a more satisfying range of foods to consumers, and put money in the pockets of their farmers. We were also adept at making the most use of the money that was provided; which in itself was stretched by collaboration with bilateral agencies and other UN programmes. Projects integrated into our overall programme were formulated in advance, awaiting funds that might be released towards the end of a budget period. FAO went a long way on a little money at that time.

With technical committees examining the work of FAO in some detail there was a solid professional interest in the biennial FAO conference. We hoped it could be attended by people who knew our subject so that there could be some constructive comment.

Volunteers of all kinds came to FAO offering their services during its first decades. Most numerous were young people from the universities, professionally qualified, and seeking direct experience in the developing world. As associate experts they were incorporated into FAO advisory teams, their expenses covered by allowances from their governments, but with no salary. There were older men, already well-off, who worked for FAO for a nominal one dollar per year. There was the American professor who heard of our idea of establishing a listing with summary notes of materials that would be useful in briefing field advisers in marketing. This needed some extra money for correspondents in various countries, and for typing services. He found it for us from a private foundation.

Niggling At The Edges

FAO had its problems and faced some attacks during its first decades, but they were minor. The English newspaper the Daily Express ran a series of articles in the 1950s and 1960s criticizing the income tax and commissary privileges of FAO staff. Stirring up popular jealousy was a good journalistic line in then-socialist Britain, with its low salaries and punitive taxation.

There was also in-fighting with UNDP. FAO had its own representatives in a few countries. Some maintained a pugnacious independence. DG Sen put them firmly into UNDP country offices as senior agricultural advisers. The establishment of the UN Special Fund in the 1960s had brought greatly increased resources to FAO as its main agency of implementation. For 1975 FAO was allocated $122 million in aid funds, one-third of UNDP’s total resources.

When Director General Saouma established separate FAO representatives with their own direct link to the country’s government, UNDP turned away from FAO. Projects on the margin of FAO’s competence were assigned to other agencies; FAO was considered ‘too big’. The 1990 UN proposal that its aid funds should go directly to recipient governments would cut FAO down substantially. Governments might engage FAO assistance with part of the funds provided: they might also be besieged by consulting firms seeking direct contracts and offering inducements to obtain them. In June 1990 FAO estimated it would lose 450 experts and headquarters support posts.

Periodic meetings of government representatives with FAO specialists and consultants were held by its commodities division to discuss prices and prospects for major products in international trade. These commodity study groups tended to grow up and leave the brood. Independent organizations such as the International Wheat Council took over their role. The tendency for these commodity bodies to be influenced by the major exporters then sparked the establishment of the UN Trade and Development Conference to press the Third World’s interest. Taking a line of confrontation, UNCTAD’s leader, Prebisch, also wanted his own commodity analyses, duplicating those of FAO.

The International Trade Centre grew out of GATT (The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) to help the developing countries find export markets for their products. It took over work in the agricultural area that had formerly been done by FAO, albeit with limited resources. With UNESCO and UNIDO, FAO had boundary disputes over agricultural education and training, and agricultural processing respectively.

At the Fourth World Food Conference held in Rome in 1974, the process of setting up new organizations to take over elements of FAO’s work gained new momentum. The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington was given funds to carry out studies fully within the scope of FAO’s economic and social department. While FAO already had a small unit with a mandate to co-ordinate agricultural research, a new international institute with a professional staff of fifty-five was set up to this end in the Netherlands. FAO’s original mandate continued, but these new organizations could apply to some areas of its work much greater resources.

The conference of 1974 also established a World Food Council. FAO’s biennial conference was attended, at best, by ministers of agriculture (and of food, if this was combined in the same ministry). The World Food Council, to be attended by ministers of foreign affairs, was intended to secure greater government commitment to food security. It was located in Rome, but was not part of FAO. It could be seen as backing up FAO’s attempts to achieve its programme objectives. It could also be seen to be checking that FAO was doing its job.

The attack on the transnational companies mounted in the early 1970s was also neg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 INTRODUCTION: STORM CLOUDS MAR THE IDEAL
• Part I The organization and its staff
• Part II Poverty alleviation: FAO’s performance in the area of marketing
• References
• Index