Conferences
cessing and manufacturing, plus greater
investment in roads, storage facilities
and rural housing as elements which are
central to an integrated rural develop-
ment strategy and to meeting the basic
needs of the poor rural strata.
The scope for inter-agency action in
this field was highlighted particularly by
Mr A.L. Dawson of the World Food
Programme in a speech to the con-
ference. The WFP, he said, had a pro-
ven capacity to prepare and help in ex-
ecuting iabour-intensive projects in a
wide range of fields such as those the
IL0 was promoting under the World
Employment Programme. His agency
had already created direct employment
for about six million workers and in-
directly for many more. He proposed
that resources other than food aid - for
example construction materials, work
tools and even cash to pay wages -
could be mobiiised internationally
serve as inputs for WFP-supported
employment projects.
In a wider context it is worth noting
that the Administrative Committee on
Co-ordination (ACC), which provides a
high-level link between the UN
specialised agencies, has recently
accepted the desirability of a rural
development strategy oriented against
poverty - wholly in line, therefore, with
the basic needs approach. From this it
appears, according to Keith Griffin,
chief of the ILO’s rural and urban
employment policies branch, that the
UN family is ‘poised to embark on an
ambitious inter-agency planning experi-
ment in rural development with an ex-
plicit anti-poverty focus’.
Good if true, though one would like
evidence that something more than the
wish is father to the thought. The ACC,
first of all, will have to shake off a few
layers of administrative dust and show
that it can muster some worthwhile
political clout within the UN system.
This is important, too, because the
World Employment Conference has ap-
pointed the ACC its executor for all
subsequent review and monitoring work
on the basic needs programmes of the
different UN agencies.
Two other reservations, which should
not be lost sight of, were posed by
Guyana’s Minister of Labour, Mr W.
Carrington, in a Plenary speech. One is
the possibility that the methods
perceived as delivering equitable growth
FOOD POLICY November 1976
- however much more persuasive than on the road; they are, rather, a warning
what went before - might not actually of the mechanical faults and hijack
do so. And the other is a likelihood that threats likely to be encountered en
the IL0 has seriously under-estimated route. Let’s hope by then the ACC will
the opposing strength of groups who have stripped down to T-shirt and jeans
will be adversely affected by its strategy. and be ready to wield a hefty spanner.
These are not sufficient reasons for
delay in getting the basic needs wagon Robin Sharp
The role of phosphorus in agric~~~~re
National Fertiiiser Development Centre of the Tennessee Valley Auttiority,
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, l-3 June, 1976.
Phosphorus is a vital constituent of all reserves appear more than ample for
living organisms. Because of this, its centuries ahead, being around
relative scarcity in the biosphere and the 130 OOOM tons of rock. The currently
unavailable forms in which it is held unexpioitabie reserves are of even
there, it is one of the three major fer- greater quantity and it appears ex-
tiiisers used in agriculture. Phosphate ceedingly unlikely that we shall ever be
to rock is consequently a major inter- in a situation where it is impossible to
national raw material’ and its produce phosphate fertiiiser. Costs and
availability and price are matters of the prices are of course another matter, and
greatest economic importance. The de- the utilisation of low quality rock in-
mand for phosphorus depends upon cluding those containing high
type of agriculture, level of technology, aluminium and iron is vital to this ques-
and relative farm prices, and cannot be tion. Three papers gave an interesting
regarded as constant. It is then ap- sidelight on the other requirements for
propriate that the subject of phosphorus the production of phosphate fertiiisers:
in agriculture should be surveyed in the suiphur and energy. There appears to be
widest sense at the conference. no lack of either. Production of all fer-
The scope of the meeting can be tilisers only takes 1% of the total US
assessed from the main titles of subject energy use, and of this only 0.07% is
areas: phosphate raw materials; used for phosphorus fertiiisers, which
phosphate fertiiiser technology; suiphur puts the currently fashionable energy
and energy requirements; supply and balance controversy into its proper
demand; soil and fertiliser phosphorus perspective.
reaction: soil-plant relations; nutrition One of the most interesting sections
of major crops; phosphorus nutrition of of the meeting was that dealing with the
animals. As with all meetings of such traditional concern of the soil chemists,
wide scope, there was a tendency to the reaction of fertiliser phosphate with
fragmentation, and to superficiality. the soil, and the prediction of phosphate
However, the advantages of seeing the demand of crops. It is a sobering
subject in the round, and hearing of the thought that some one hundred and
problems in different disciplines more thirty years after superphosphate was
than compensated for this. invented, there are still wide areas of
disagreement in this subject. However,
the soil, agronomy and fertiliser work
Reserves
was in the great majority of cases
The section on phosphate reserves and characterised by a critical, scientific ap-
raw material was essentially optimistic. proach. There was little of the empirical
There were clear warnings that the most and very boring work on the effects of
easily available and highest quality rock different extractants or methods, and a
phosphates in America are of strictly much greater readiness to attack fun-
limited quantity, but total world damental problems of soil physical
‘See John Edwards, ‘Phosphate rock’, chemistry such as ion activities, sorp-
Food Policy, Vol 1 No 4, August 1976, pp tion and transport mechanisms, and
348-35 1. non-equilibrium states.
421
Conferences

In this and later sections of the usually present in a soil in considerable The main impressions left by this
meeting the question was raised whether quantity, but which the plant may not meeting were firstly that there is no lack
more use could be made of modified be able to absorb rapidly enough. It is of raw phosphate rock, but the
forms of phosphate rock, either by grin- also promising for crops to be grown in technology of its use may need to
ding or other treatments, rather than the developing countries, with phosphate- develop quite rapidly, and there is con-
inherently more complex and expensive fixing soils, where the application of the tinual striving for cheaper or more
conversion into various forms of soluble optimum rates of soluble phosphate fer- efficient methods of utilising the rock as
phosphate salts. Any of the developing tilisers is not practicable. fertiliser. Secondly, there are the signs of
countries who have phosphate rock Apart from the problems involved in a better and more fundamental un-
deposits, but no easy access to sulphur, finding and applying phosphate, there is derstanding of the interrelationships of
energy or technology, are particularly also the problem of getting rid of it. This phosphorus in soils and crops, which
concerned. However, the traditional is partly solved by utilising waste such will allow more efficient and balanced
arguments against the use of low as sewage sludge as fertilisers in their use of the fertiliser phosphates which
solubility phosphate materials still pre- own right, and there is a thoroughly are available. This and previous heavy
vail, and their increased use must be a justified interest in making use of such use probably mean that little or no
matter of slow testing in different en- material more efficiently and sensibly. growth can be expected in the rate of
vironments. The possibility of using One does not need to be an ‘eco-nut’ to use of phosphorus fertiliser in developed
microbiological techniques for in- believe that all residues containing agriculture, but there is still an enor-
creasing the availability and uptake major quantities of nutrient elements mous scope for its application on the
from such resources was discussed, and should be put back into the crop- less developed parts of the world. There
this could become important in the ping cycle. The eflluent from animals appears to be no cheap or easy way of
future. The greatly differing effec- kept intensively may be a major source avoiding the basic fact that plants need
tiveness of different phosphate rocks, of contamination and pollution with phosphorus, and the increased crops
when used as a straight fertiliser, was phosphorus. There is little evidence that demanded by greater populations and
stressed. Various physical and chemical phosphorus fertiliser properly applied to higher living standards will undoubtedly
techniques now available allow a fairly the land ever reaches water courses or continue to increase the fertiliser
accurate characterisation of the inherent aquifers in any significant amount. The phosphorus statistics.
availability of the phosphate. greatest phosphorus pollution hazard
One of the most interesting points with arable farming is not direct
made at the meeting was that very large leaching, but erosion of surface soil P.B. Tinker,
amounts of phosphorus are often locked which has been enriched in phosphate Department of Plant Sciences,
away in highly inert organic compounds into neighbouring streams. University of Leeds, UK.
such as phytates in the soil, which may
be as much as half a tonne per hectare.
This may not originate from fertilisers,
but there is no doubt that many of the
The World Food Conference of 1976
soils in the developed parts of the world Iowa State Uniuversity, Ames, Iowa, 27 June-l July, 1976
are becoming high-phosphate soils
following long-continued heavy ad- Scene and actors in the world food world’s small farmers. When all
ditions, and the assessment of their drama change faster than the script. speeches were ended and group debates
phosphate demand requires a con- The scene or ‘set’ is alternately the food- silenced, the distinguishing theme to
tinuous reappraisal. It was regrettable abundant nations with their afhuence if emerge was that the vast majority of the
that there was no specific coverage of not profligacy, and food-short ones, world’s farmers are small and if more
this important point in a special paper. desperate in their privation. Among per- food is to be produced they will produce
sonalities, heads of state get much atten- much of it.
tion, as do the magic-producing crop Moreover, in a ritual confession it
Plant breeding and pollution and food scientists including Nobel was noted that small farmers have been
The tendency of agronomists in the past Prize winning ones. Less featured are neglected in development. One reason is
has usually been to accept crop varieties the supporting cast of technicians and that they are politically weak. Solicitude
selected by plant breeders in developed farmers. must come from outside their numbers.
agricultural environments, and then try Locale for this conference was one of The conference, intended as a follow-
to determine how much fertiliser is the planet’s most productive farming up to the Rome sessions of 1974,
needed to maintain local yields. In many areas. Most on stage during the session, brought together 1600 people from
areas, a feeling is now growing that we though, were the food-short countries. almost 70 nations. Among people atten-
should start at the other end, by They were admonished once again to do ding, academic and public service
delibc rately introducing during the more to solve their own problems. affiliations predominated. Political
breeding process an ability to tolerate The conference won distinction in its figures were notably absent: those from
low phosphate conditions. This is par- choice among actors. It gave excep- the host country were specifically and
ticularly relevant and sensible for an ele- tional attention to the role played by the conspicuously excluded.
ment such as phosphate, which is least heralded among lesser cast, the If food-short nations were lectured

422 FOOD POLICY November 1976