Transmittal to Congress of a Report by the United Nations Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture.

To the Congress:

I am sending herewith for the information and consideration of the Congress the First Report to the Governments of the United Nations by the Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture. Appended to this Report is the Constitution of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture at Hot Springs, Virginia, requested the Interim Commission to formulate and recommend.

The Interim Commission has done its work well. It has prepared a plan for a permanent international organization through which Governments can pool and extend their knowledge and collaborate with each other in raising the standards of nutrition of their peoples and in establishing and maintaining an expanding prosperity for agriculture in all countries.

I recommend that the Congress authorize the acceptance of the Constitution and the participation of the United States in the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The United Nations have already made much progress in setting up an organization for international security. But our collaboration for peace must be on a broader basis than security alone. We must strive to correct the conditions that predispose people toward war or make them the ready tools and victims of aggressors. We shall need also to work together as Nations toward achieving freedom from want. Our participation in the Food and Agriculture Organization will be an essential step in this collaboration.

The Organization will seek its ends through the provision of international services in agriculture and nutrition which have heretofore been either lacking or inadequate. Among other things, it will provide the means for bringing together from all parts of the world the results of research in all the fields of agriculture and nutrition and for disseminating ideas and advice on how the available information can be of greatest usefulness.

Improved standards of nutrition, increased levels of farm incomes, avoidance of agricultural surpluses—these are among the important objectives that the Food and Agriculture Organization will assist the Nations of the world in achieving. The Organization will seek better conditions in food and agriculture by fostering international cooperation in developing the optimum use of the resources of land, labor, and science. One of its important jobs will be to help in improving the marketing of agricultural products throughout the world so that farmers can find good markets here and abroad and continue to produce as fully as is consistent with sound conservation practices.

The Constitution of the Organization provides that it shall include fisheries and forests within the scope of its work, and that in agriculture it shall cover both food and non-food products. The work of the Food and Agriculture Organization will be primarily technical and advisory. Its staff will be small; its budget will be small, $2,500,000 for the first year— with $625,000 as the share to be borne by the United States—and about twice that amount in succeeding years. It is in no sense a relief organization.

In becoming a Member of the Food and Agriculture Organization, we will retain complete freedom of action in determining our national agriculture policies. Under its Constitution, the Organization will have no powers of direction or control over any Nation. It will recommend agricultural policies and advise Nations on their food and agricultural problems, but it will have no power to coerce or command. The Constitution provides that all member Nations shall have equal representation in the conference of the Organization, each being entitled to one vote. Our responsibilities in joining the Organization are of the same nature as those Congress has heretofore authorized in approving our participation in the Pan-American Union.

I therefore recommend that the Congress approve our active participation in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in accordance with its proposed Constitution as set forth in Appendix I of the attached report, and authorize annual appropriations of our share of the budget of the Organization.