One of the main objectives of a WFR referred to in the UN General Assembly resolution was to ‘promote the rational disposal of intermittent agricultural surpluses’. The FAO secretariat had been forced to address the issue of the disposal of agricultural surpluses with the growth of large food stocks, particularly in the United States, and pressures to release them (FAO, 1964). Wheat stocks in the four major exporting countries (United States, Canada, Argentina and Australia) had reached over 34 million metric tons by 1955 and were to grow to over 58 million tons in 1961. Stocks of coarse grains (barley, oats, maize, sorghum and rye) in the United States and Canada alone were 32 million metric tons in 1955 and increased to almost 82 million metric tons in 1961. In addition, there were accumulating stocks of rice, dairy products, vegetable oils and oil seeds, cotton and coffee. This called for the need to establish some kind of ‘code of conduct’ to avoid the potential disruptive effects of surplus disposal on agricultural production and trade. The explosion in the scale and pace of technological advance in US agriculture, and government support programmes enacted to help farming communities through the years of economic depression of the 1930s, led to ever-increasing surpluses as supply outstripped domestic and international commercial demand. Hoping that the problem would go away, the US Congress and the White House adopted ad hoc measures, which, in reality, supported high levels of production long after changes in post-war demand for US farm products had indicated the need for a major adjustment in national agricultural policies. It was at this point that a mixture of political, economic, social and humanitarian objectives was fused in fashioning the US food aid programme largely in the form that we know it today.
In the late 1940s, the United States faced new economic and political challenges as European countries began to emerge from the devastation of war and rebuild their economies. Despite persistent imbalance between agricultural production and demand, leading to huge surpluses, US farmers had benefited from a large and growing overseas market and a considerable food aid programme. Now, new challenges were emerging. European agricultural production began to rebound and demand for US farm commodities declined as competition increased and the need for a large US food aid programme in Europe receded. However, the US farm price support system instituted in the 1930s remained largely in place, and the impact of new technologies helped create enormous food stocks in governmentheld inventories, draining financial reserves, and leading to heated political debate about how to resolve the problem.
World Financial Crisis and Capitalist Ambitions
