In October 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) met for its first conference, underlining its twofold objective, namely to “secure adequate supply of food for every man” by increasing production and applying nutritional science and expertise, but also to secure “adequate livelihoods” for food producers and care for the welfare of farmers. From the start, FAO’s achievement of these goals was undermined by financial limits, divergences in the approaches of its founding fathers and the emergence of postwar geopolitical conflicts. In an article recently published in the International History Review, Professeur Amalia Ribi Forclaz explores the shift, between 1945 and 1955, from a low-modernist understanding of rural welfare to increasingly technical development programmes.

What is the main argument of your article?

The article examines the early years of FAO and looks at how it approached the modernisation of agricultural societies and the alleviation of rural poverty in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The article focuses particularly on FAO’s Rural Welfare Division and on its Director, Horace Belshaw, a British educated New Zealand economist who promoted a local-sensitive and so-called “social approach” to rural development that emphasised the subjectivity of welfare and that was sceptical of top-down development programmes. As the paper argues, Belshaw’s holistic approach to rural communities was abandoned in the early 1950s in favour of the rise of an increasingly technical development consultancy that was characterised by short-term interventions and the prioritisation of technical knowledge.

Why did you decide to focus on the Rural Welfare Division?

The case of the Rural Welfare Division tells us about the shifting goals and approaches of international development programmes. It points to the existence of a short-lived but intense period during which FAO privileged in-depth research and the insights of social surveys to gain a deep understanding of rural needs, before turning to the more fast-paced and hands-on approach of technical assistance that was based on a belief in the transfer of expert knowledge and in progress through science. As the article shows, rural welfare was shaped by interwar and wartime experiences in developing housing, health, education and recreation through state intervention and international aid, and it went beyond much narrower understandings of development as economic growth that became prevalent during the Cold War. So, using the Rural Welfare Division as an entry point into the history of FAO enabled me to highlight that international organisations can go through fast-paced shifts in how they approach development and that officials and experts are never a monolithic group. Besides, by focusing on Belshaw, an economist who embraced interdisciplinarity and who went against the grain of mainstream development thinking, I also wanted to shine a light on some of the forgotten actors in international development thinking.

The article features in a special issue of the International History Review which you have co-edited with Corinne A. Pernet. What was the driving rationale behind this attempt to re-examine the history of the FAO, and why do it now?

In the last ten years or so, international organisations as generators of ideas, knowledge and policies of development have received increasing attention from scholars in various disciplines, including history. In the case of FAO, however, our understanding of its role remains patchy. There exist a few institutional histories but they tend to focus on the FAO leadership and overall trajectory. We wanted to open up a range of new perspectives to highlight the intellectual roots of rural development ideas within the organisation, to trace the transnational flows of knowledge and expertise between donor and recipient countries and to bring into focus the geopolitical and local context of specific development missions.

You mention the initial, twofold objective of FAO, namely to “secure adequate supply of food for every man” and “adequate livelihoods” for food producers and care for the welfare of farmers. How can we contextualise this in relation to the 2030 Agenda?

It is not an exaggeration to say that since the late 1990s development has been going through a prolonged crisis. Some scholars have hastily proclaimed “the end of development”, others have called for a new development agenda that responds to the challenges of climate change, dwindling natural resources and continuing global inequality by promoting a more sustainable approach to consumption and production. The UN’s global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) announced in 2016 reflect this new development agenda. FAO, with its focus on food and agriculture, has an important role to play in reconciling the need for food and agricultural productivity with the preservation of local ecosystems, community rights to local resources and the livelihoods of small farmers.
 

• Last June, the Graduate Institute formed a new partnership with FAO.
• Full citation of Professor Ribi Forclaz’s article:
  Ribi Forclaz, Amalia. “From Reconstruction to Development: The Early Years of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Conceptualization of Rural Welfare, 1945–1955.” In “Revisiting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): International Histories of Agriculture, Nutrition, and Development”, ed. Corinne A. Pernet and Amalia Ribi Forclaz, special issue, International History Review. Published online 1 June 2018. doi:10.1080/07075332.2018.1478873.

Interview: by Aditya Kiran Kakati, PhD Candidate in International History and Anthropology and Sociology.