Books in Brief: World Food Problems and Prospects

World Food Problems and Prospects, by D. Gale Johnson (American Enterprise Institute, 83 pp, $3).

Professor Johnson’s eminently sensible book analyzes recent output and price trends in world agriculture, and concludes that “. . . there are no reasons based on limitations of resources or on the technology and biology of food production that will prevent the population of the world from being more adequately fed a decade hence than in the years immediately before 1972.” Contrary to popular belief, population is not outpacing agricultural output in the world as a whole, not even in the “developing” countries; the planet is not running out of suitable land; and the total supply of cereal grains is not used in livestock production and to distill bourbon. What is true, however, is that world market prices have recently risen extremely quickly, world grain reserves have fallen to very low levels, and a few years of poor crops in North America could mean disaster for the rest of the world. For the longer run, Professor Johnson finds that the present level of grain prices is unlikely to persist, and indeed, most agricultural product prices have backed off sharply from their 1974 peaks. In Third World countries, enormous potential for increased production exists, and the methodology for achieving much greater agricultural output is already well understood. Serious scholars have found that farmers in the developing countries do respond, and do so quite quickly, to appropriate price and cost signals—“if there is conservatism and irrationality in the world, it is to be found much more often among governments than among farm people.”

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George J. Viksnins

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World Food Problems and Prospects, by D. Gale Johnson (American Enterprise Institute, 83 pp, $3).

Professor Johnson’s eminently sensible book analyzes recent output and price trends in world agriculture, and concludes that “. . . there are no reasons based on limitations of resources or on the technology and biology of food production that will prevent the population of the world from being more adequately fed a decade hence than in the years immediately before 1972.” Contrary to popular belief, population is not outpacing agricultural output in the world as a whole, not even in the “developing” countries; the planet is not running out of suitable land; and the total supply of cereal grains is not used in livestock production and to distill bourbon. What is true, however, is that world market prices have recently risen extremely quickly, world grain reserves have fallen to very low levels, and a few years of poor crops in North America could mean disaster for the rest of the world. For the longer run, Professor Johnson finds that the present level of grain prices is unlikely to persist, and indeed, most agricultural product prices have backed off sharply from their 1974 peaks. In Third World countries, enormous potential for increased production exists, and the methodology for achieving much greater agricultural output is already well understood. Serious scholars have found that farmers in the developing countries do respond, and do so quite quickly, to appropriate price and cost signals—“if there is conservatism and irrationality in the world, it is to be found much more often among governments than among farm people.”