If we now choose the right road, the poorest countries could become the world's breadbasket

‘he acute food crisis that gripped the world in 1972-74 has visibly subsided. Harvests have been bountiful for two successive years; this year's production, too, definitely looks good, even though it will not match last year's record crop. World output of wheat, coarse grain, and milled rice for 1977-78 is currently estimated at 1,322.5 million metric tons (mmt). This is only 11 mmt short of the total of 1,333.1 mmt harvested in 1976-77. Fate has been kind at our time of direst need.

Food stocks, badly depleted in the crisis years, have been substantially replenished. In the USA storage bins are overflowing with grain—this has depressed farm prices, triggering agitation among farmers, who are faced with plunging profits. Even in India the problem, for a change, is not how to cope with chronic shortages but how to deal with a large surplus and to store the bulging stocks the Government has acquired from the producers.