ABSTRACT
A useful starting point in developing a background on the international food and agricultural economy is to recognize that total trade in all goods and services has grown at a faster rate than has world gross national product almost throughout the post-World War II period. The increased interdependence that this growth in total trade represented is important, for it serves as an important backdrop for the increased interdependence in food and agricultural products that eventually followed. Such distortions of the exchange rate have been typical of Mexico in and help to explain in part why Mexico's dependence on imported food is growing so rapidly. From 1955 through 1974 the data are broadly consistent with a perfectly elastic long-run supply of foodstuffs to the world economy. In fact, one can be mildly optimistic that the world will be able to deal with its food production problems and promote a widely shared growth in per capita incomes and well-being.
