The death rate through hunger and starvation in World War Two, rivals the number of those killed in combat. By 1945, agriculture had effectively ground to a halt, leaving hundreds of millions to survive on the equivalent of two potatoes a day.  

It was against this desperate backdrop that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was born, as an agency of the newly founded United Nations. Spurred on by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s call to secure freedom from want, its mission was simple: to help build a “world of plenty”.  

Marking the UN agency’s 75th anniversary, FAO’s Andre Vornic has produced a short podcast series on the founding of the key UN agency. In this first episode, ‘a hungry world rolls up its sleeves’.