What is a healthy diet and just how many of the 5 700 million people in the world have one? What do they eat and how is it produced? Has food production risen and can it keep on doing so? Is there enough land and water to support the world's increasing population and how must agriculture adapt to provide sustainable food security for everyone into the twenty-first century? Dimensions of Need is published to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Its easy-to-read text, exemplified by more than 600 photographs, maps, charts and diagrams, reviews the state of the world's food resources, its agriculture, forests and fisheries, and describes the kinds of action being taken to conquer hunger while protecting and conserving the planet's natural resources and environment. "If understanding leads to compassion, then my fervent hope is that this book will help the reader understand the principal issues involved in feeding the world. It could make a difference to 800 million chronically undernourished people. Dimensions of Need is about the challenges that have, over the past 50 years, largely shaped FAO. They can be summarized in terms of inequity, hunger and poverty." Chapters: Food and people Protect and produce Building the global community Food and agriculture: the future