Food and Agriculture Organization

The Sixth Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization was to meet in Washington in November. The eleventh session of the Committee on Financial Control met in July 1950 and recommended reduced expenditure in 1951. Factors responsible for the cut in the working budget, which at maximum would have been $5,000,000 but was estimated at $4,500,000, were the $200,000 which constituted the first repayment installment on the four year loan granted the FAO by Italy for the removal of its headquarters to Rome and $100,000 repayment to its Working Capital Fund which had been drawn upon the previous year. The Director-General (Dodd) noted that despite decreased income increased requests had been made by the member governments upon FAO, especially in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry divisions, and that it had been necessary to create new regional offices in Cairo and Bangkok. The aims of FAO continued as they had been stated in the Report of the Fifth Session of FAO Conference; (1) to undertake a limited number of projects of major importance, (2) to increase projects which extended direct aid to enlargement of production and improvement of nutrition, (3) to place greater emphasis on activities aimed at increasing production of food and primary products, and (4) not to alter the general character of the FAO regular program although it was to be somewhat integrated with that of the United Nations technical assistance program. Budgetary reductions were made in administrative services, travel, regional organization, information and translation work, statistical and economic service, and direct technical assistance. The expanded Technical Assistance Program mitigated, however, reductions of FAO in this field.