ABSTRACT
The efforts of the United States to achieve national food security, in terms of adequacy and sustainability of the food supply, equity and access to food by the entire population, nutritional quality, and the social, economic, and health benefits of our food system, have had, by and large, a negative international impact. Policy has historically sought for adequate supplies of food, has attempted to place food in the marketplace at low prices, and has attempted to maintain a viable farm economy and rural community. Each presidential administration has different policy emphases. In the Truman years, the emphasis was upon flexible but permanent controls on parity, with an eye on the welfare of the small family farm. The defeat of the Brannan plan by powerful interest groups shifted the emphasis away from the small producer. Every nation faces the need for a new social understanding about relationships of people to the environment and ecosystems in their physical and biological context.
