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the only way to prevent this from happening was for limiting communist expansion in the developing world.”
to increase food production per acre—although From 1945-1965, the United States played a similar role to the one
Fink had doubts that this could be done quickly that Boyd Orr had envisioned for the World Food Board. American food
enough to preserve freedom. aid under PL-480 and other programs provided a stabilizing influence
Overpopulation, Fink and others argued, on the world food market for twenty years. However, the U.S. made
caused hunger, political instability, communist no secret of the fact that it was also using food aid strategically to keep
insurrection, danger to American interests and countries in the Western sphere of influence so that they would not turn
finally, war. In his 1997 book Geopolitics and communist. Far from solving the problem of world food insecurity food
the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the aid sometimes made it worse. Often the American surplus crops would
Cold War, historian John Perkins calls this depress food prices so significantly in recipient countries that indigenous
sequence of events “population-national secu- farmers couldn’t compete. Governments receiving food aid below market
rity theory.” According to this theory, if world cost had no incentive to improve agriculture in their own countries. Ad-
9
hunger wasn’t addressed, developing countries ditionally, the commodity crops that were surplus in the United States
would turn communist just to get enough to weren’t necessarily what people were used to eating in their traditional
eat, possibly leading to a nuclear war and the diets, such as when wheat was sent to a country that traditionally ate rice.
end of modern civilization. “Food for everyone In some cases, people preferred the American grains to their native crops
might not insure peace,” wrote the soil scientist and became dependent on foods that they couldn’t grow themselves.
Charles Kellogg in a 1949 article for the Journal Despite these flaws, it seemed that the world food problem had been
of Farm Economics. “But we can be reasonably solved—for a while. But fears about overpopulation leading to hunger and
sure of the opposite: Without sufficient food for unrest would continue to influence American thought and policy for the
the population of the world peace is uncertain, remainder of the 20th century—and even today. When I and other college
indeed unlikely.” 10 students were told that it was our job to feed nine billion people by 2050,
By 1948, two schools of thought about feed- no one even mentioned Boyd Orr, Malthus or the Cold War. Whether my
ing the world had emerged. One was that it was instructors realized it or not, however, their idea was a direct legacy of
already too late to do anything and that famine the hopes and fears about world hunger that started in the 1940s.
and war were inevitable. The other believed that
it was possible for food production to keep up (This article first appeared in Acres USA.)
with population growth—but only through the
application of science and technology to agri- Anneliese Abbott is a graduate fellow in the Nelson Institute for Envi-
culture. John Boyd Orr’s dreams of feeding the ronmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a
world fell into this second category. B.S. in plant and soil science from Ohio State University and has been
Some soil conservationists, like Hugh researching sustainable agriculture and agricultural history since 2015.
Bennett, believed that soil conservation and She is currently writing a book on the history of Malabar Farm in Ohio.
working with nature were the keys to increasing She can be contacted at amabbott@wisc.edu.
agricultural production. Others proposed radical
technological solutions like growing algae and REFERENCES
1.
Abbott, A. Feeding the world: Malthusian ideas in American agriculture. Wise Traditions.
yeast for human consumption. The idea that 2020;21(3):82-86.
eventually prevailed, however, was that capital- 2. Boyd Orr, J. As I Recall: The 1880’s to the 1960’s. Macgibbon & Kee, 1966.
intensive industrial agriculture was the only way 3. Boyd Orr, J. Minerals in Pastures and their Relation to Animal Nutrition. London: Lewis,
1929.
to feed the world. 4. Boyd Orr, J. Food Health and Income: Report on a Survey of Adequacy of Diet in Relation
The official American response to the “feed- 5. to Income. London: Macmillan, 1937.
Boyd Orr, J. Food and the People. London: The Pilot Press, 1943.
ing the world” dilemma was the Agricultural 6. Pett, LB. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Can J Public
Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, 7. Health. 1946;37(1):12-16.
Pearson FA, Harper FA. The World’s Hunger. Cornell University Press, 1945.
commonly known as PL-480. This program had 8. Burch GI, Pendell E. Population Roads to Peace or War. Penguin Books, Population
several functions. It helped get rid of surplus 9. Reference Bureau, 1947.
Perkins JH. Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. Oxford
American crops without overwhelming the University Press, 1997.
world market and it provided humanitarian aid 10. Kellogg CE. Food production potentialities and problems. Journal of Farm Economics.
1949;31(1 Pt 2):251-262.
for malnourished people. But as historian John
Perkins has observed, it also served “as a major
instrument for feeding the world’s hungry and

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