Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

115. Address by Secretary of State Vance ¹

Seattle, Washington, March 30, 1979

America’s Commitment to Third World Development

These past weeks have been a time to deal with immediate diplomatic issues of extraordinary importance to our nation. Tonight I want to speak about an issue that may seem less immediate but is no less important: our approach to the economic future of the developing nations.

Before turning to our strategy toward the North-South dialogue between the industrial and developing nations, let me first talk for a moment about why the development of Third World countries matters to us.

Its human dimension is clear. At least ½-billion people regularly go hungry in a world of plenty. A half-billion is an abstract number, another statistic among many and, therefore, too easily dismissed. But when we pause to picture in our minds how much human suffering lies behind that single statistic, the scope of our moral challenge is evident. The continuation of that suffering is an affront to the conscience of men and women everywhere.

Americans have long recognized this challenge: We have generously shared our resources in times of tragedy and need abroad, from the great hunger in Ireland in 1847, to the Marshall plan and point 4 program² 100 years later. We are determined today, despite budgetary stringency, to live up to that historic moral responsibility.

Our humanitarian commitment is reinforced by the recognition that it also serves our national self-interest to assist the process of equitable growth within the developing nations. We need to help shape an international economic system which will support and stimulate that growth.

Here on this Pacific rim, you know well a fact that is true for our entire nation: that your prosperity and well-being depend on the increasing prosperity and well-being of others throughout the world.

Some 75% of the Northwest’s wheat crop is sold on world markets. Fully one-third of western Washington’s forest products economy is dependent on those markets, and that dependence is increasing.

One dollar in eight in this State’s economy comes directly from international trade. More than a quarter of a million jobs in Washington and Oregon alone depend on exports.

Much of this trade, as you know, is with developing countries. Four of the State’s 10 biggest export customers are developing countries. Seven of the State’s biggest sources of imports—imports without which your economy could not function—are developing countries.

These countries of the Third World are increasingly involved in our daily lives. We know how oil from these countries affects us. As a nation, we also get more than 50% of the tin, rubber, and manganese we need from less developed countries and substantial amounts of our tungsten and cobalt. We now export more to the developing countries, including the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, than to the Common Market, Japan, and the Communist countries combined. For example, almost one-half of our commercial aircraft sales abroad are to developing nations.

So, as we survey and address questions of the evolving international economic order, we do not do so on some abstract basis. We do so as a matter of economic self-interest and, for some sectors of our economy, of survival.

The participation of the developing countries is also essential to solving pressing global problems that will shape the character of our future. Inefficient and wasteful use of the Earth’s resources, pollution of the oceans and atmosphere, nuclear proliferation, unchecked arms competition, all of these involve the well-being and safety of the human race. None can be solved without the involvement of the developing nations.

Most countries of the Third World have too little food and rapidly growing populations. We face the prospect of a population increase in the final quarter of this century which will equal the entire growth of world population from the birth of Christ to 1950. Roughly 90% of this increase will be in developing countries. And perhaps more troubling, this growth seems certain to be greatest in already hard-pressed urban centers. Imagine, if you can, what current projections would indicate: a Mexico City with 32 million people; a Sao Paulo with 26 million; Calcutta, Bombay, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Beijing, and Shanghai each with some 19 million in 20 years or so.

We all recognize that the developing countries themselves bear the major burden for responding to these challenges. The industrial countries, however, can play a crucial role in assisting their efforts. Whether, and how, we help the developing nations in pursuing their development goals is one of the central issues of our time.

U.S. Approach

Our approach to development in the Third World is based on four fundamental tenets.

First, we are committed to supporting strong and equitable growth in the developing nations, as a matter of our national interest as well as our national ideals. And we recognize that at times this requires facilitating adjustment in our own economy in ways which will support economic growth in the Third World.

Second, we are committed to improving the international system in ways which will be mutually beneficial to all, which respond to the particular needs of the developing nations, and which accord them an appropriate voice in decisions that affect them. By the same token, we believe firmly that as nations develop and grow stronger, they incur increasing responsibility to contribute to, as well as gain from, the international economy.

Third, despite the economic pressures we and other industrial nations now face, the United States remains committed to increasing transfers of resources from the richer to the poorer nations.

Let me emphasize, however, a fourth point. As we cooperate with developing nations in seeking useful changes in the international system, and as we consider the level and nature of our resource flows, we must be clear about our priorities. Alterations in the international system and resource transfers among nations are not ends in themselves. They are a means to the compelling goal of development within nations.

We cannot spend so much time and energy on our international discussions of the roadmap that we lose sight of our destination. The destination—the goal we share—is to find practical ways to have an appreciable impact on the lives of people around the world, and especially on the lives of those for whom daily survival is an unanswered question.

We envision an international economic system which is not rigidly divided into northern and southern blocs. We seek a global community which furthers the well-being of all countries, in which all recognize the responsibilities of each to the others, in which the richer help the poorer for the benefit of all, in which international deliberations are focused as much on practical ways of serving human needs as on levels of resource flows among nations, and in which every nation dedicates itself to economic justice as well as economic growth.

We can help build such a system in a number of ways: in our closer cooperation with the other industrial nations, constantly taking account of the effect on each other of our domestic decisions; in encouraging constructive involvement of Communist nations in the promotion of a healthy global economic system; in our positive participation in the current North-South dialogue, and in our search for practical programs that can best promote Third World development.

North-South Negotiations

Let me concentrate today on the negotiations that are taking place between industrial and developing nations and the practical focus on development itself that we hope can be achieved.

The distinction between industrial and developing nations, between North and South, is clearly eroding. The industrial and agricultural performance of some of the developing nations now surpasses that of some of the industrial countries. But negotiations between North and South remain valuable. While we believe a broader global community is emerging in which rigid economic blocs no longer predominate, we understand the importance the developing countries attach to the Group of 77. The developing nations can use their cohesion to bring greater clarity and purpose to our negotiations.

We face an unusually large number of important international conferences in the coming 18 months. These meetings provide an extraordinary opportunity for progress on issues of importance to developing nations—and to us all.

As we prepare for them, we must first recognize the progress that already has been made. Last week in Geneva, for example, agreement was reached on most of the basic elements of a common fund to help finance international buffer stocks and other commodity development measures.³ This marks an important milestone in a process launched at the fourth U.N. Conference on Trade and Development in 1976. Over the past 2½ years of intensive negotiations, all participants moved from their original positions in search of common ground. The negotiations now move into a more technical phase leading to the drafting of articles of agreement, a process which could be concluded as early as the end of this year.

In the past few years, industrial nations and international institutions have undertaken a number of other important measures of concrete benefit to the developing countries.

• Multilateral and bilateral aid flows have increased steadily in recent years. Agreements have recently been or will soon be concluded to enable the multilateral development banks to increase significantly, in real terms, their lending levels over the next 3 to 4 years.

• Resources available through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financing balance-of-payments difficulties have been substantially increased—through liberalization of the IMF Compensatory Financing Facility; through the fourth IMF quota increase; and through the establishment of new IMF facilities including the trust fund and the $10-billion Witteveen facility.

• Consuming countries have agreed to the concept of shared responsibility with producing countries for financing buffer stocks to stabilize prices in commodity markets. Agreements for coffee and tin were renegotiated; a new agreement for sugar has been reached;⁴ and negotiations on rubber and a new cocoa agreement are underway. Such agreements can have important anti-inflationary benefits for our own economy.

• All Western industrial countries have implemented preferential tariff systems for developing countries. The multilateral trade negotiations will provide new opportunities for all nations to increase their economic welfare. Just as consumers and producers will benefit in our own country, so they can gain in the developing world.

• And donor countries have agreed to the concept of easing or eliminating the official debt burden of the poorest countries.

The United States has played a leading role in many of these and other international initiatives and we have taken national measures to support them.

• We have increased our foreign economic assistance from $3.7 billion in fiscal year 1975 to $7 billion in fiscal year 1979.

• In the commodities field, the United States is a member of the tin agreement, and we intend to make a contribution to the tin buffer stock. We are seeking Senate approval to join the sugar agreement, and we hope to conclude new cocoa and rubber agreements in which we can participate.⁵ Last month we put forth ideas on a price stabilization agreement for copper.⁶

• We endorsed the concept of a common fund, and we worked toward that end with flexible new proposals on the major issues involved.

• On trade, the United States has generally resisted protectionist pressures. We have a preferential tariff system for the developing countries which has assisted growth in their manufactured exports.

• We now have legislation enabling us to waive interest payments on past development loans to the poorest countries and to allow principal to be paid into local currency accounts to be used for development purposes.

• Almost all our development assistance to the poorest countries is now in grant form.

• We have facilitated access to the technology that is in the public domain, and we have helped developing countries draw upon our advanced technologies—using satellites, for example, to develop their natural resources and improve their internal communications.

• The President is proposing the creation of an international development cooperation administration which would consolidate or improve coordination among our bilateral and multilateral development assistance programs.⁷

In short, there has been real progress. But far more remains to be done in concluding agreements to stabilize commodity markets, bringing the developing nations more fully into the world trading system and implementing the new codes and tariff reductions of the multilateral trade negotiations, facilitating the adjustment of domestic economies to changing patterns of world trade, arriving at a common understanding of the responsibilities of both governments and corporations to create a better environment for international investment and the flow of technology, assuring adequate assistance to nations facing acute financial difficulties, strengthening the scientific and technological capabilities of developing countries, increasing aid flows to countries which need it most and can use it effectively, and finding ways to assure an appropriate role for developing countries in international economic institutions.

This is a heavy agenda. And these are difficult times in which to address it, since most of the industrial nations face difficult domestic economic challenges.

In a period of fiscal austerity, there is a danger, which we must frankly address, that negotiations between North and South could return to the rancor of earlier years. This will happen if each nation becomes so concerned with its own problems that it forgets the essential reality of an interdependent age: that each nation can surmount its own difficulties only if it understands and helps resolve the difficulties of others as well.

The industrial nations must maintain their commitment to the well-being of the developing nations. The developing nations must recognize that making demands which the industrial nations cannot meet will only produce international acrimony, not progress. And the oil-producing nations must recognize their special responsibilities for the health of the global economy and their fundamental stake in its continued vitality.

A Practical Focus

This brings me to a central point. Our progress in North-South negotiations—our progress toward a more equitable and healthy new international economic order—will turn on our common ability to avoid endless debates on sterile texts and to focus instead on concrete development problems which we can tackle together and which directly affect people’s lives.

Only by focusing on practical ways to meet human needs can we remain clear about our goals and clear in explaining them to our peoples. I know that the American people will never be convinced that there is an inherent value only in resource flows among nations. They want to know, and have a right to know, how their taxes are being used to better the lives of people abroad.

It is this practical—and human—focus which compels us to concentrate our aid on programs that directly improve the lives of poorer people abroad. We believe it is important that we concentrate our resources on programs which most directly contribute not only to growth but also to equity in those countries which receive our aid.

This approach is not only this Administration’s policy. It has been expressed by the Congress in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act⁸ and the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1978.⁹ And it applies not only to our bilateral aid programs but also to those programs we support in the multilateral development institutions.

Growth without equity can lead to a situation in which a growing economic pie is cut into ever more unequal pieces. Equity without growth can lead to a situation where a shrinking economic pie is cut into equal but ever smaller pieces. Neither situation can lead to long-term political or economic health. Both growth and equity are necessary.

A practical focus also requires that we be clear about our priorities. Thus while we will continue to work with the developing countries in addressing the future of the international political and economic system, we intend increasingly to concentrate on specific development goals: energy, food, health, and increasing the capacity of the developing countries to obtain and apply the knowledge and technology they need.

There is good reason for seeking international emphasis on each of these areas:

• An ample supply of energy at reasonable prices is essential to economic advancement. It is also a key to our own prosperity.

• Adequate food and good health are basic to human survival and productivity.

• And the ability of people and institutions in the developing countries to obtain, develop, adapt, and apply technology is critical to most development problems.

Let me illustrate these priorities today by describing our current efforts and future plans in two areas—energy and food. In the coming months and in other forums such as the U.N. Conference on Science and Technology for Development and the World Health Assembly, we will be addressing the others as well.¹⁰

Energy

No issue we face today more clearly demonstrates the interests we share with the people of the developing world than energy. The commuter buying gasoline in Seattle and the peasant farmer buying kerosene near Khartoum both face the harsh reality of rising world petroleum prices. Governments in the richest countries and those in the poorest must deal with the impact of higher energy costs and rising energy demand on their national economies.

Let me be frank. The worldwide energy situation, already serious, is likely to get worse before it gets better. For the foreseeable future, in the absence of substantial new efforts, worldwide growth in energy demand will continue to outpace worldwide growth in energy production.

We must do what is necessary in our own country to restrain consumption and increase domestic production. But we cannot solve the energy problem by what we do here alone. It is a global challenge.

Thus, we have a direct interest in helping developing countries devise their own effective energy policies—helping them identify their energy resources, determine their current and future energy demand, identify the technology they need, and obtain the necessary financing. Let me tell you what we are already doing in each of these areas.

We are now helping several developing countries survey their national energy resources, define their future energy needs, and construct alternative energy strategies.

With our strong support, the World Bank is significantly expanding its program to help developing countries finance further exploration and development of fossil fuels. The Bank envisages loans amounting to as much as $3 billion over the next 5 years.

We are devoting substantial financial resources to research on renewable energy sources. In addition to private financing, the Department of Energy has budgeted over $600 million this year to study, develop, and demonstrate renewable energy technology. We have asked the Congress for more than $700 million for these efforts next year. These programs can lead to technological developments that directly benefit the developing nations.

The Agency for International Development (AID) has requested $42 million in FY 1980 for the actual application of renewable energy technologies in developing countries.

We have accelerated our training and technical assistance programs for energy professionals and institutions in the developing countries. We have proposed a new institute for scientific and technological cooperation, which would become an important element of our foreign assistance program.¹¹ Energy will be a major focus of the work of the institute as it both helps strengthen scientific and technological capacities in developing countries and also identifies domestic American research relevant to development abroad.

And we are providing substantial direct and indirect financial assistance to help developing countries acquire the energy technology they need. The Export-Import Bank authorized approximately $2 billion in energy-related loans and guarantees to developing countries in fiscal year 1978. This has produced more than $3 billion in U.S. exports of energy equipment. The World Bank, to which we are the largest contributor, has already provided about $10 billion for financing of conventional power projects. And the other development banks also are active in this area.

But we must and will do more.

• We will respond positively to additional requests from developing nations for help in evaluating their energy resources, needs, and strategies.

• We will encourage the regional development banks to expand their energy programs and to consider new approaches to encourage further private capital flows into mineral and energy development in their regions.

• President Carter and other heads of state at the Bonn economic summit last July¹² pledged to increase assistance for harnessing the vast energy potential of the Sun, the wind, the oceans, and other renewable resources. We are now in the process of formulating a coordinated effort which will be discussed at the Tokyo summit in June.¹³

• With strong U.S. backing, the United Nations will hold a World Conference on New and Renewable Energy in 1981. We intend to play an active role in that effort.

• We will increase our support for research, development, and training efforts of national and regional energy institutions in developing countries. We will encourage other nations to join us in this effort.

• We will also work with other nations to determine whether it would be useful to supplement the work of such institutions. Together we will seek to identify gaps in current efforts, and ways to fill them, including the possible establishment of new institutions. For example, international research centers—which enjoy support from developed and developing countries, private organizations, and multilateral institutions—have played a major role in addressing developing country agricultural problems. If, as a result of discussions with our colleagues in developed and developing countries, there is agreement that this approach would be appropriate in the field of energy, the United States would support such international energy centers.

• We must assure that as new renewable energy technology becomes relatively less expensive, adequate financing is available for the developing countries to acquire it. We will ask the World Bank to undertake a thorough review of this question.

These steps and others we will be discussing with developed and developing countries in the months ahead can help assure that high energy costs do not undermine economic growth and a steadily improving way of life for those who live in the developing world.

Our future economic well-being and theirs carries an inescapable imperative: We must work together to expand the availability of energy for developed and developing countries alike. There is no promise for any of us in an intensifying competition for limited energy supplies.

Food

Let me turn to a second development priority which we intend to focus on in the months ahead—the stark fact that one out of every five of our fellow human beings is sick or weak or hungry because he or she simply does not have enough to eat.

In one respect, this is a question of the equity with which economic benefits are distributed. Millions are too poor to buy food, even when it is available. As I have stressed, our overall development efforts must address this fundamental issue.

But it is also clear that in many developing countries, food production is not keeping pace with population growth. The long-range prospects point to even greater food deficits in developing countries in the years ahead. Not only will we approach the limits of new land to cultivate, but soil erosion, desert encroachment, and simple overuse are robbing the world’s historic breadbaskets of their productive capacity because of inadequate land and resource management practices.

The United States is already doing a great deal to increase the availability of food in the developing world. Roughly half of our bilateral economic development assistance—approximately $600 million this year—is devoted to agriculture and rural development. We provide roughly two-thirds of the world’s concessionary food assistance. Our contribution this year will amount to $1.4 billion. And we have contributed $200 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

But, as with energy, we must and will do more. Last September the President established a Commission on World Hunger.¹⁴ The commission will report this summer on concrete proposals for additional efforts in dealing with the world food problem.¹⁵

In the meantime, we are moving ahead in several areas. We continue to believe that an effective International Wheat Agreement, with an expanded Food Aid Convention, would help stabilize world wheat prices and strengthen world food security.¹⁶ We are disappointed that after more than 2 years of effort, a workable international arrangement could not be achieved at last month’s negotiations.¹⁷ If prospects improve for reaching an accord, we are prepared to resume these negotiations.

Under the existing Food Aid Convention, we are committed to providing a minimum of 1.9 million tons of food assistance annually. We will more than double that minimum commitment, regardless of whether a new Food Aid Convention is successfully negotiated. And we are strongly encouraging other current and potential donors to do the same.

To assure that our food aid commitments can be met even during periods of tight supply, we are seeking to establish a special government-held wheat reserve which would add to food security for food-deficit countries.¹⁸

The agricultural research breakthroughs of the past decade and a half have been of enormous benefit to the developing world—with improved plant strains, better animal breeds, and more efficient farming techniques. Much of this research has concentrated on cereal crops and cattle. While continuing research in these areas, we must now devote greater attention to some of the traditional crops and animals raised by poor farmers on marginal lands and to less widely grown crops that hold promise as new sources of food and income. These will be major agricultural priorities of the institute for scientific and technological cooperation. Other government agencies will also increase their support for such research.

We must also do more to prevent the tragic loss of 10–20% of the food which is produced each year in the developing countries. More food is lost to rodents, insects, and spoilage in the developing world than all the food aid to the developing world combined. We are already a major contributor to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s post-harvest loss fund, and both AID and the new institute will be devoting increasing resources to finding better ways to assure that what people toil to produce is available to sustain them.

Finally, we intend to channel our food and development assistance increasingly to countries which are seeking to adopt domestic policies which encourage their own food production and equitable distribution and promote better use of water and land resources. We intend to participate actively in the upcoming World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development which will be addressing these essential questions.¹⁹

Conclusion

Programs such as those I have mentioned today are no cure-all. But they come to grips with the most pressing problems of the developing countries, and they will make a difference where it counts most—in the daily lives of people. They will insure that more people in the developing countries will have enough food to eat, that fewer children will die in infancy, that there is sufficient energy to power more irrigation pumps and to bring more heat and light to distant villages.

The resources we can bring to bear may seem small in comparison to the magnitude of the problems which must be solved. But let us remember that development is a long-term process. Our hopes for the coming decades are lifted by the fact that people are better off in most developing countries today than they were two decades ago.

Life expectancy in the developing world in the past two decades has jumped from 42 to over 50, an increase which took the industrial nations a century to accomplish. Adult literacy in the developing world has jumped from one-third in 1950 to over one-half. In the past quarter of a century, per capita income in the developing countries grew on the average of almost 3% a year. This is about 50% better than historical growth rates in Western nations during their industrialization.

This is not cause to be sanguine; but it is reason to be confident that practical progress can be made. But only if:

• We and the other industrial countries recognize that we share a common destiny with the developing world;

• They, the developing nations, recognize their responsibilities both within the international system and for equity as well as growth in their own societies; and

• All of us, together, recognize the wisdom of a great man the world has now lost—Jean Monnet.²⁰ “We must put our problems on one side of the table,” Monnet said, “and all of us on the other.”

1. Source: Department of State Bulletin, May 1979, pp. 33–37. Vance delivered the address before the Northwest Regional Conference on the Emerging International Order. For the text of the question-and-answer session following Vance’s address, see ibid., pp. 37–38.
2. Reference is to the Truman administration’s program for technical assistance, commonly known as Point Four, as it was the fourth foreign policy objective Truman described in his January 20, 1949, inaugural address. See Public Papers: Truman, 1949, pp. 112–116.
3. Negotiations on the Common Fund resumed in Geneva on March 12. On March 20, The Wall Street Journal reported that “tacit agreement” had been achieved on the size of the Common Fund. (“Agreement Is Reached On Support Fund Size For Commodity Prices,” p. 38)
4. These agreements regulated commodity prices and sales among signatories. The United States signed the most recent versions of the coffee agreement in 1975, the tin agreement in 1976, and the sugar agreement in 1977.
5. The Senate ratified the 1977 International Sugar Agreement on December 1, 1979. Church had blocked ratification of the agreement, which the United States had signed in 1977 (see footnote 4 above), asserting that it did not “provide sufficient protection” for American sugar producers. In 1980, Congress approved legislation (H.R. 6029) implementing the treaty. (“Participation by U.S. In Sugar Agreement Is Ratified by Senate,” The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1979, p. 34; Congress and the Nation, vol. V, 1977–1980, p. 387) Negotiations on a new cocoa agreement reached a stalemate in December 1979 after several rounds of talks, which took place throughout 1979. (“Cocoa Pact Talks End Without New Accord,” The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 1979, p. 35) In October 1979, 55 nations approved a rubber agreement in order to stabilize the world price of rubber and create a buffer stock. (Victor Lusinchi, “World Pact on Rubber Price Reached,” The New York Times, October 6, 1979, p. 38) On May 22, 1980, the Senate voted 90–1 to ratify the agreement. (Art Pine and Richard L. Lyons, “Ways and Means Votes Against Carter’s Oil Import Fee,” The Washington Post, May 23, 1980, p. A–6)
6. In late February, U.S. representatives to an UNCTAD meeting in Geneva discussed elements of a copper agreement, including the establishment of a copper buffer stock of 1 million MT. (“U.S. in Switch, Suggests Stockpile Plan For Copper at UN Conference in Geneva,” The Wall Street Journal, February 28, 1979, p. 38)
7. See footnote 2, Document 77.
8. Public Law 93–189, which Nixon signed into law on December 17, 1973, added to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (S. 1983; P.L. 87–195; 75 Stat. 424) a statement of policy regarding development assistance authorizations. It also contained the provisions of the “New Directions” mandate. See footnote 3, Document 22.
9. The President signed the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1978 (H.R. 1222; P.L. 95–424; 92 Stat. 937–961) into law on October 6, 1978. The Act authorized U.S. bilateral and multilateral assistance for FY 1979 and endorsed the concept of using foreign assistance to fulfill “basic human needs.”
10. The conferences were scheduled to take place in Vienna August 21–30 and in Geneva May 7–25, respectively.
11. Title IV of the International Development Cooperation Act of 1979 (P.L. 96–53), which the President signed into law on August 14, 1979, authorized the President to establish an Institute for Scientific and Technological Cooperation.
12. See Document 92.
13. The summit was scheduled to take place June 28–29; see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. III, Foreign Economic Policy, Documents 221 and 222.
14. See footnote 6, Document 102.
15. The Presidential Commission on World Hunger prepared a paper on the hunger problem, which Linowitz sent to Vance and the President in June. The paper is printed in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Document 257.
16. The International Grains Arrangement or Agreement (IGA), promulgated in 1967 during the Kennedy Round of the GATT and entered into force on July 1, 1968, consisted of two legal instruments: the Wheat Trade Convention (WTC) and the Food Aid Convention (FAC). The FAC committed signatories to providing a fixed amount of commodities (4.5 tons) to developing nations each year. In 1971 signatories negotiated a new umbrella agreement for the WTC and FAC—the International Wheat Agreement—and renewed it in 1974, 1975, and 1976.
17. See Victor Lusinchi, “Talks to Stabilize World Wheat Price Breaks Down,” The New York Times, February 15, 1979, p. D–5. Signatories eventually approved a new Food Aid Convention in London on March 6, 1980.
18. Documentation on the administration’s efforts to establish a wheat reserve is in Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.
19. The FAO World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD) was scheduled to take place in Rome July 12–20, 1979.
20. Monnet died in mid-March.