ECONOMICS: Food by a Miracle?

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In the gilded ballroom of Quebec's Chateau Frontenac, where delegates were served with black caviar from Lake Winnipeg and salmon from the Gaspe, the new United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization came alive. Its job: to do something about hunger in the postwar world.

Thirty-seven nations had joined. Russia had one of the largest delegations (26 members) at Quebec. Day after day the Russian delegates followed the proceedings, waiting for permission from Moscow to sign up. The permission never came.

The other nations, while willing to sign the F.A.O. constitution, were unable to come to a clear agreement on F.A.O.'s rightful function. Should it have power to act in streamlining the world's distribution of food? Or should it be solely an advisory body?

A Global Granary? The surplus-producing nations wanted to empower F.A.O. to distribute surplus foods where they were most needed and thus support the producer's market prices. Anxious to become self-sufficient, the importing nations were leary of direct F.A.O. intervention, tried to put it in an advisory role.

In the end it was certain that F.A.O. would at least be an advisory and educational body, possibly something more. Said F.A.O.'s new director-general, 65-year-old Sir John Boyd Orr, Scottish nutritionist and farmer: "If we succeed in reaching all our objectives it will be a miracle. But the days of miracles are not passed."