From the International Institute of Agriculture to the Food and Agriculture Organisation

The chapter discusses how paradigmatic shifts in international agricultural cooperation were brought about by two discontinuities in the international discourse on agriculture. The crises that hit the world economy in the early 1920s and early 1930s caused a first shift, highlighting the necessity for an international management of agricultural commodities, while the primacy assigned to development problems in US policy after 1945 marked a second break that determined the mission and activities of the FAO for most of the post-war period.