Brandt on an end to poverty and hunger

The Brandt Commission (ICIDI) clearly saw hunger as an important enemy and food as an important input into development. That perhaps is not very unusual, but what is unusual is the interweaving of hunger and food into other major sections. The formal charter on 'Hunger and Food'3 covers fifteen pages but further references appear in at least ten other parts I of Programme For Survival totalling thirty-seven additional pages for a total of fifty-two or over a sixth of the text. Food scarcity is like all other topics considered within a framework of mutual (overlapping) interests (see p 73, for an example). Low growth of South food production will not merely harm the South. It will create intolerable foreign exchange crises and squeeze out markets for North manufacturers. It will not merely pauperise those in the food-deficit periphery; it will push up prices erratically and violently for northern households. Food is also seen as the basic human need and freedom from hunger as a basic human right which it is a global as well as a national duty to make operational and

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