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The Impact of Agriculture on Third World Health: What Goals for Health Professionals?

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Poverty, Development and Food

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Abstract

Intellectually, politically and administratively, Hans Singer has been in at the birth’ of several international organisations full of potential to transform poor people’s lives: FAO, WHO, and perhaps most directly the World Food Programme and UNICEF. I should not like to quantify the share in the reduction of age-specific death-rates since 1945 that is indirectly due to his contribution, but it is significant. Yet those death-rates, among the poorest one-fifth of Third World populations (and especially among children under 5), remain horrifyingly high. This paper argues that one major, remediable reason is the mutual unconcern of policy-makers in the fields of health (especially nutrition) and agriculture.

This paper is a version of part of my contribution to a joint study, with Emanuel de Kadt, of ‘Agriculture-Health-Linkages’, to be published by the World Health Organisation. I am grateful to Dr de Kadt for numerous comments and exchange of ideas, and also to Dr Richard Laing and members of WHO for valuable comments on an earlier draft.

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Authors
  1. Michael Lipton
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK

    Edward Clay (Fellow) (Fellow)

  2. World Food Programme, UK

    John Shaw (Senior Economist) (Senior Economist)

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© 1987 Michael Lipton

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Lipton, M. (1987). The Impact of Agriculture on Third World Health: What Goals for Health Professionals?. In: Clay, E., Shaw, J. (eds) Poverty, Development and Food. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09214-7_8

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