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After World War II the United States responded to the decimation of Western Europe and to the expansion of communism by providing massive economic assistance— the Marshall Plan. President Truman's Point Four Program enunciated American willingness to share "scientific advances and industrial progress for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas." As of the late 1970s, after a generation of unprecedented development progress for a majority of the world, the most basic needs of nearly one billion people remain unmet and the international economic system is no longer working well for either the industrial democracies of the Northern Hemisphere or the developing countries to their south. Without increased cooperation and major systemic reforms, the North as well as the South face the prospect of persistent, high inflation and slower growth in the 1980s. Today, as in the years immediately after World War II, a new statecraft is required if the last decades of this century are to bring political, economic and social progress to the countries of the North and the South comparable to that achieved by the industrial democracies in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1970s.

After WWII, the US responded to the expansion of communism & the economic destruction of Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. Executed as the Point Four Program, it offered to share US scientific & industrial advantages with underdeveloped areas. As of the late 1970s, the most basic needs of nearly a billion people were unmet, & the international economic system no longer works well for either the northern or southern hemispheres. Both face high inflation & slow growth in the 1980s. A new statecraft, comparable to that after WWII, is needed to bring social, political, & economic progress to both North & South. Modified HA.

Like the short circuits in an overloaded electrical system, a rash of"systems overloads" in such essential fields as food and fertilizer supply are resulting from man's apparent inability to adapt his institutions rapidly enough to permit a continuation of the rapid increases in output of recent years. The food and fertilizer crises of the mid-1970s, while ac celerated by such short term factors as widespread drought and the recent unprecedented economic boom, are also very much the product of major, longer term, interacting trends. Growing demand has been outrunning traditional sources of supply for a number of essential commodities, including food, fertilizer and energy, at a time when most nations, including the United States, are becoming heavily dependent on each other for continued progress. World economic and political structures have been too slow in their response. Major disrup tions and higher inflation have been a consequence. A critical issue is whether resolution of the longer term scarcity situations needs to continue in the 1974 context of "winners" and "losers." This article examines how the United States in its role as global food manager contributed significantly through its actions in 1973 and much of 1974 to the crises of the mid-1970s which brought to the world double-digit inflation, massive recession, and innumerable premature deaths, and how the World Food Conference marked a sharp turn in United States—and world—policy toward seeking a positive-sum game approach to the food and fertilizer problems—an approach by which all principal parties might gain.