ABSTRACT
‘As a start to the programme of international food security, the authors call for an early conclusion of the International Grains Arrangement, and increases in emergency food supplies.’ An essential aspect of wheat, the most important of all cereal grasses, is its value as a foodstuff and as the chief raw material for bread production. Despite its renewability, wheat has been seen as a commodity of political and even strategic importance. At the national level, it featured as a political weapon in respect of the US grain embargo on some grain sales to the USSR and at the forefront of several national development plans. An important aspect of trade in wheat compared with other commodities under consideration is the comparatively low proportion of production entering world trade - about 22 per cent, for example, in 1980. Although this is a higher proportion than for other grains, the world market is thus essentially a residual market.
