ABSTRACT
Some years ago Professor D.G.Johnson wrote a book entitled World Agriculture in Disarray (Johnson 1973). Twenty years on it is still an apt description of world food production systems. Nor is knowledge of this disarray confined to the academic world. A glance at a newspaper or television confirms that the problems of world agriculture are now widely discussed. The problems, however, differ from one part of the world to another. In the developing countries of Afro-Asia and Latin America, where food production still employs much of the working population and accounts for a substantial proportion of national income, famines still occur, malnutrition is widespread, and much farming is technologically backward, with productivity of both land and labour below that in the developed countries. Furthermore, population growth continues to be rapid, and numerous writers have warned that population growth is, or will, outrun food production. Yet nor are developed countries without problems. In both North America and the European Community food surpluses mounted in the 1970s and 1980s, whilst there was increasing criticism of the elaborate systems of agricultural protection that were costly to the consumer and damaging to other food exporters. Modern agricultural methods have also attracted much criticism-beginning with Rachel Carson’s celebrated book Silent Spring (Carson 1970)—because of their effect upon the environment.
