Your 592-Future Policy of F.A.O.

We agree that all international organisations should concentrate
on work which is likely to lead to practical recommendations for
action by Governments, and that they should only summon
conferences with clear cut objectives in view.

2. With this in mind we have considered the functions of F.A.O.

with a view to clarifying our ideas on future policy. Functions of
the organisation may be classified as:-

(i) Economic work, particularly work leading to commodity
agreements and understandings;

(ii) Nutritional work;

(iii) Technical agricultural work (dissemination of knowledge,
technical missions, etc.)

Since May 1946, however, F.A.O. has become involved unavoidably in
a heavy programme of short term work, which by its very nature has
required frequent conferences. Although this short term work was
not originally envisaged, it has probably been carried out more
effectively by F.A.O. than it would have been by independent
agencies which would have tended to confuse member nations' short
and long term objectives.

3. We feel that it should now be possible to reduce this short
term work, and that F.A.O. should be able to devote an increasing
proportion of its resources to carrying out its original
functions.

4. Our comments on F.A.O.'s long term work are:-

(i) On the economic side the staff of F.A.O. within the limits set
by short term activities has made a useful contribution. From our
knowledge of the recent meeting of the Economics and Statistics
Advisory Committees we believe a reasonable effort is being made
to link short term and long term economic policies and to
emphasise the importance of the latter. The success of F.A.O. in
this field depends largely on the support received from individual
Governments.

(ii) Nutritional work of F.A.O. appears to have been hampered
somewhat by shortage of staff and we also feel that the work of
this Division could be better directed. In particular, we should
like to see less time spent on collating reports, which are
available in any case, and more emphasis placed on field work.

(iii) We agree technical agricultural work is seriously lagging.

The main difficulty here seems to have been the failure to develop
staffing adequately. This may or may not be the fault of F.A.O.,
but there should certainly be an effort to put more drive into
this phase. Until more rapid progress is made in developing
F.A.O.'s role of disseminating information, material and practical
knowledge, especially on the non-economic side, the organisation
might appear only as a body overburdened with short term problems
and conferences. As already mentioned, we believe that the
tapering off of F.A.O's short term work will provide an
opportunity for more effective efforts in this field.