The Solution to Food Shortages

From Back to Godhead

The following exchange took place after a talk by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada before the World Health Organization, in Geneva, on June 6, 1974.

WHO member: Your Divine Grace, do you have any suggestions for solving the worldwide problem of food shortages?

Srila Prabhupada: Yes. My suggestion is that people should utilize all this vacant land for crops. I have seen so much land lying dormant. For instance, in Australia and also in America, there is so much land lying dormant. The people are not utilizing it.

And whatever produce they get, sometimes they dump tons of it into the ocean to keep the prices high. And I have heard here in Geneva that when there was excess milk production, some of the people wanted to slaughter twenty thousand cows just to reduce the milk production.

This is what is going on in people’s brains. Actually, they have no brains. So if they want to get some brains, they should read these authentic Vedic literatures, and they should take spiritual guidance. And that guidance is simple: produce your food – all the food the world needs – by properly utilizing the land.