In May 1943, while World War II devastated Europe, a group of scientists met for two weeks in the plush surroundings of a remote Virginian resort hotel.1 There they attended a technical and expert conference on food and agriculture as official delegations of their 44 respective home countries. For many, the travel had been dangerous, difficult, and long, but the experts were driven by a mission: to ensure lasting peace in the postwar order by increasing food production and restructuring agricultural markets. They were assured by the backing of US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had initiated this gathering. This meeting in Hot Springs, Virginia, was the first in a series of conferences called by the United Nations, the term used for the Allies fighting against the Axis powers.2 The conference on food and agriculture was followed by several others, most notably the UN Monetary and Financial Conferences in Bretton Woods, which established the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and in Dumbarton Oaks, which laid the foundation for the United Nations Organization at the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. Access to food was widely regarded as one of the key elements

necessary for establishing lasting peace.3 For the delegates in Hot Springs, it was obvious that agricultural production and agricultural

trade had to be seen in conjunction. Only stable international markets provided incentives for producers while providing consumers with a reliable food supply. The Hot Springs conference, therefore, not only led to the creation of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), but also influenced the commodity policy envisioned in the charter for the proposed International Trade Organization (ITO). Although only a small percentage of agricultural products reached

world markets, regulation was considered essential because fluctuations could have devastating effects on the overall goal of price stabilization. Foremost in the minds of all postwar planners was a fear of a repetition of the situation after World War I: a breakdown of international agricultural markets, unsellable surpluses after the end of the war-induced artificially high demand, and, after the financial crash of 1929, the ensuing Great Depression, which had hit agriculture especially hard. Since virtually all governments wanted to maintain their domestic

protection of agriculture, trade in agricultural products was never seriously considered as a free market. Instead, international commodity arrangements were supposed to create the stability necessary for an expansion of production and international trade. This chapter sketches the “worldwide solutions” to commodity trade

suggested by the FAO and ITO and outlines the reasons why they were stillborn. As important as describing the ultimate failure of the plans is to uncover the reasons why these plans were drawn up in the first place. In other words, why did smart, ambitious people with sound political instincts believe their equally ambitious plans involving worldwide cooperation stood a chance of being accepted by governments? There was a window of opportunity for this kind of worldwide plan, but it closed quickly. The last part of the chapter briefly outlines further developments in agricultural markets in the absence of an international organization.