ABSTRACT
Like clothes or popular music, political issues, however serious, are vulnerable to the fluctuating tides of fashion and to the shortness of the span of public attention. Ten years ago the food crisis was an issue in fashion. Commissions, task forces, research institutes, charitable bodies, diplomats and politicians were all involved. A dozen new institutions to analyse the problem of food security and agricultural development were set up within a period of less than three years. A World Food Conference was convened in Rome, provoking a bureaucratic contest in Washington as to whether the State Department or the Department of Agriculture was to lead the American delegation. Henry Kissinger, who won the contest, committed the United States to work for policies which would ensure that by 1985 'no child in the world would go to bed hungry'. As a consequence of the rise in prices in 1972 and 1973, the Soviet decision to purchase grain on the world market instead of relying solely on domestic supplies, and the American decision to limit exports in order to protect domestic consumers in a period of rising inflation, Insecurity of supply appeared to be a permanent feature of the world food trade, affecting all importers, especially those least able to pay the demanded price, or to store reserve stocks as insurance.
