Conditions and trends in the world protein economy

Eating habits and food systems are difficult to change. Isolated and refined vegetable proteins are being used increasingly in a wide variety of food systems to improve nutritive values and functional qualities without displacing the system itself. They provide a way for people with rising affluence to move up the “food ladder” without disturbing familiar and traditional habits of eating. Worldwide commercial demand for food and feed crops from surplus‐producing nations will continue to expand during the next decade. U.S. producers and those of other exporting nations will be able to expand production sufficiently to meet this rising commercial demand at reasonable prices during most of the years of the 1980 decade. But if tonnages necessary to satisfy real nutritional need (mostly in developing countries which are critically short of foreign exchange) were added to the commercial demand, the totals would be so great, there would be no way the export countries could produce enough. If malnutrition is to be stemmed or prevented, developing countries will have to learn to produce more on their own soil and provide the means of getting it to the people who need it. Contrary to some views, the U.S. livestock feeding industry should be regarded as an effective part of a world grain reserve and an aid to maximizing exports. In the short crop year of 1974, U.S. feed grain consumption was reduced to a much greater extent than exports. Livestock have the ability to act as a “surge tank” in the food line. There is urgent need in the world today for improved varieties of high protein legumes that are adapted to the tropics. An important component of sucess in improving food supplies in developing countries will be the emergence of enlightened and courageous political leadership. When country leaders “short term” it by giving in to urban pressures for cheap food, the result is usually counterproductive.