THE 19 Latin-American countries that have joined the Food and Agriculture Organization make up one-third of the total membership in FAO. In association with other nations of the world, they are pledged to improve the living standards and nutrition of their peoples. Thus, Latin America is a partner in FAO's efforts to achieve these objectives by ensuring an ample supply of the products of the farms, forests, and fisheries of the world.
FAO has three principal ways of helping its 57 member nations to increase production and efficient distribution of all food and agricultural products. It promotes concerted international action by recommending definite ways and means for putting the latest facts and scientific methods into practice, offers technical assistance wherever necessary, and helps member governments to formulate their food production plans by gathering the facts on the ever-changing world food and agriculture situation.
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How does FAO propose to stimulate food and agricultural production in Latin America through these means? During the current year FAO will start a series of technical programs in Latin America. Several of these have their origin in the visit of the Director-General to Latin America during the spring of 1947 and in the activities of FAO liaison officers who visited all member countries in the region during the end of 1947 and in the early part of 1948
In the field of promoting international action, FAO has already held the first Latin-American Forestry and Forest Products Conference at Teresopolis, Brazil. This Conference reached broad agreement on the best methods of opening up the vast timber resources of all Latin-American countries. A nutrition conference will be held in July at Montevideo, Uruguay. This will be a regional technical conference designed to assist governments in making more widely available the existing knowledge of nutrition problems in Latin America. The organization of a Regional Fisheries Council to promote better development of Latin-American fisheries holds a high priority in FAO's projected activities. During the early autumn of the current year, FAO proposes to call a meeting on infestation of foodstuffs in Latin America; an international meeting on locust control problems is also scheduled for 1948. A regional conference on problems of agricultural production and distribution in Latin America is also contemplated.
In connection with the preparation of the 1950 World Census of Agriculture, a technical training center to instruct students in the latest methods of collecting agricultural statistics will be organized in Mexico City in 1948.
Technical assistance has been given to Venezuela, in the form of a special mission which investigated the vegetable oil resources of that country last January. The mission studied the possibility of exploiting industrially the wild oil-bearing palms and introducing cultivated oil seeds that would thrive under Venezuelan conditions.
Technical information has been collected and published, including current statistics of food and agriculture, special commodity studies, and reviews of the world food and agriculture situation.
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FAO is organized to carry out these activities through its technical divisions and services - Agriculture; Forestry and Forest Products; Fisheries; Nutrition; Rural Welfare; Economics; and Information.
In order to assist him in defining policies and in conducting the activities of the Organization, the Director-General plans to appoint a small number of high-ranking regional officers who will at the same time be his advisers and his representatives. Two have already been appointed for Europe and the Near East, and appointments will soon be made for Latin America and the Far East.
FAO is headed by a Director-General chosen by the annual Conference (Sir John Boyd Orr, the first Director-General was succeeded by Norris E. Dodd in June 1948.) The policy-making body of FAO is the annual Conference in which each member nation has one vote. Between sessions of the Conference the Council of FAO, comprising 18 member nations, acts for the Conference Latin America is at present represented on the Council by Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico. It keeps the world food and agriculture situation under constant review and directs the policy of the International Emergency Food Committee, which recommends the allocation of agricultural commodities in short world supply.
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By itself FAO could make only a partial contribution towards freedom from want. But the Organization works closely with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and other international agencies concerned with trade, credit, monetary stabilization, labor, health, education, and other matters vital to the welfare of nations. FAO will also wish to co-operate closely with such bodies as the proposed Economic Commission for Latin America
