F.L. McDougall and the Origins of the FAO

Abstract

This article evaluates the role of Frank Lidgett McDougall, Australian economist, businessman and public servant, in the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It traces McDougall’s development from an advocate of preferential trade within the British Empire to his embrace of a broader, more internationalist, concept of nutrition. By the mid‐1930s, McDougall’s advocacy of policies to improve nutrition worldwide through “marrying health and agriculture” led to the Australian government’s advocacy of such policies in the League of Nations. McDougall was successful in persuading Australian policy makers that proposals to improveworldwide nutritional levels were also in Australia’s best interest, by increasing demand for Australian agricultural exports. Finally, McDougall’s significant personal role in the establishment of the FAO is assessed as the culmination of his career as a major behind‐the‐scenes architect of public policy.

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“…The Committee became closely connected with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), of which McDougall was one of the founders. 106 In 1947 and 1949, the Committee made a substantial contribution to the formulation of a comprehensive programme of work for the ILO on social security, vocational training, hours of work, manpower and employment, and safety and hygiene for rural workers. In the immediate postwar years, all the Regional Conferences also paid special attention to agricultural issues, which were seen as crucial to the economic development of 'underdeveloped' countries.…”

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“…During those discussions taking place during World War 2 that preceded the foundation of the FAO, one of the most important hopes and aspirations was that the new organization should help to solve important health problems related to scarcity of food or inadequate nutritional quality of the diet for large groups of people [ 292 , 293 ], not only in the poor countries (or colonies) in Africa, Asia and Latin America, but even in some of those countries that were then among the most affluent ones in the world. This had its background not only in the war-time experience of how serious consequences starvation and severe malnutrition can have, and in the need for economic reconstruction in Europe following the end of World War 2, but also in what had happened during the economic crisis of the late 1920s and the 1930s, when farmers in North America were not able to sell much of the cereal grains that they had produced (which therefore instead were burnt) at the same time as large groups of people were undernourished, if not starving, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis were taking a heavy toll among undernourished or poorly nourished people.…”

“…The Australian government official and 'amateur' economist Frank L. McDougall had advocated a 'nutrition approach' to world agriculture and its extension into 'economic appeasement' already during the 1930s, and was frequently using the slogan 'to marry health and agriculture' [ 293 ]. Some people had hoped that the ideas expressed in this slogan could be realized even at the organizational level when the United Nations and a family of related organizations (including WHO, FAO, WFP, UNICEF and UNESCO) were founded following the end of World War 2, i.e.…”