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Show 7Aeoome . 7ouut 'in WASHINGTON I j8 Wal,er Shead : l WNU Corr.pond.nt j r..-.rf,r WNU Washington Bureau, 1616 Eye St.. N. W. U. N.'s Food Organization Discusses World Problems rARM leaders, agricultural ex- perts and government officials interested in agriculture are placing plac-ing great stress on the outcome of the meeting of the food and agricultural agri-cultural organization of United Nations, Na-tions, which opened its fourth session ses-sion in Copenhagen on September 2. The session likely will last approximately ap-proximately two weeks. Organized in the United States, the FAO has held three organizational organiza-tional meetings, one in Mexico City, another in South America and the third in Canada. This fourth meeting is in Denmark. Each of the national farm organizations organ-izations has one representative at the meeting to press for the production pro-duction and distribution plans which were the result of the recent international agricultural meeting in London. The state department, as this is written, has not announced an-nounced names of the American official of-ficial delegates, but the department of agriculture already has designated desig-nated several men who will become, be-come, along with farm organization organiza-tion leaders, a part of the American Ameri-can advisory group. These include Under - Secretary of Agriculture Dodd, production and marketing administration's Shields, Wells of the bureau of agricultural economics, econom-ics, Bowles (not Chester) of the foreign agricultural relations department, de-partment, Lambert of agricultural . research and Stiebeling of home economics. This meeting of FAO will hatch the first long range program for world agriculture, based upon a worldwide survey, which has just been completed and which includes 70 countries. John Orr of Scotland, director general of FAO, will present the proposals for this food program which, if adopted, will be laid before be-fore the meeting of United Nations at its scheduled meeting in October. Octo-ber. Many Smaller Meetings This program is the result of exploration ex-ploration into the reasons for surpluses sur-pluses and shortages in world food supply, and is expected to contain provisions for preventing the recurrence re-currence of such conditions. In the meantime, committees of the organization or-ganization have been holding meetings meet-ings in various European cities on such questions as diet, a nutritional goal, possible changes in production produc-tion to meet the goal, a current appraisal of the food situation in all the countries of the world, economics eco-nomics and statistics, forestry and agricultural production and research. re-search. Reports on these various phases of the agricultural picture will be presented to the meeting for rejection, adoption or modification. modifica-tion. Farm leaders here are convinced con-vinced that the future of American Ameri-can agriculture is closely bound with world agriculture, and that never again can the United States draw within her shell with a policy of isolation. Our own agricultural market is so sensitive that it will be governed gov-erned largely by world agricultural production, prices and distribution. distribu-tion. No longer can our expanded production depend upon the domestic domes-tic market for consumption. Seventy countries are now members mem-bers of the FAO and two new countries, coun-tries, Italy and Switzerland, are expected to apply for membership at the Copenhagen meeting. In connection with the economics and statistics report, it might be well to consider the recent report Tf the bureau of economics of the agriculture department, supplemented supple-mented by findings of the Federal Reserve board, to the effect that some 32 million families in this country still are earning less than $3,000 per year. If that figure is true in this country, and it undoubtedly un-doubtedly is, think what the meager income must be of untold millions of families of the rest of the world. Most People Have Little Despite the fact that the American Ameri-can people have savings of something some-thing like 81 billion dollars in bank deposits, currency and government bonds . . . yet 70 per cent of the American people have little or nothing saved for the inevitable in-evitable rainy day . . . the saving being concentrated in the upper income in-come brackets . . . the people who take in $10,000 or more a year, and who were well off before the war. So the war, which poured hundreds hun-dreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of the American people, still left the country with the in- come divided just about as it was before the war. What then must ! be the plight of European and Asiatic Asi-atic countries? j So distribution, surplus and price I too, at uns important meeting of j FAO will be one of the major factors fac-tors to be discussed in any long range agricultural program in which feeding of the world s population popu-lation is the most essential job before be-fore the organization. |