The key role of food imports in dietary improvement in developing countries - and their cost

Statistics collected over the last twenty years show a significant increase in the per capita daily calorie supply of even the poorest countries. For many, however, this represents not an improvement in domestic agriculture, actually often in decline, but an increase in imports. This article reviews worldwide changes in the food import/export balances of the developing countries and concludes that more attention must be devoted to agriculture itself rather than to paying for food imports by the export of industrial products.