much longer term of several decades. The long term prospects could turn out to be very different, depending on whether this is the main, or dominant, issue amongst those currently being considered, or just a passing tendency, and what happens in the next decade or the several decades after that.
5. The Cold War Structure maintained the World's Food Supply and Demand System
The basic trend of the world food supply and demand is changing in a world-wide flow which reflects the global political and economic structures. The East/West cold war had been set up on a basis of controlling the post war world food supply and demand. The world had effectively been split into two factions under the old East/West cold war structure, and a market economy was absent in the eastern bloc socialist countries, and self-sufficiency in food was attempted within the country or region.
In western countries, although a market economy has been adopted in principle, with the professed aim of achieving international free trade under the terms of the GATT agreement, many governments have actually intervened in various ways, such as price-fixing for agricultural products, production controls, or trade restrictions, in order to avoid or diminish the contradictions and negative social aspects that go hand in hand with a free market economy, as well as to prevent radicalism and socialism amongst farmers and laborers.
Amongst the developing countries, many have adopted a socialist economic plan to achieve self-sufficiency in foodstuffs, and even those with a capitalist economy have attempted to increase their own food production levels with various protectionist measures. The advanced western nations, led by the USA, have been supporting the developing countries in a bid to up their food production by organizing international agricultural laboratories such as the FAO and the IRRI. In some developing countries, such as Ethiopia, where the Eastern and Western block countries were trying to maintain their own spheres of
