Food Crisis, shortage of food in the capitalist world. It erupted in the mid-1970s, 144 and made food less accessible to millions of people, principally in the agrarian countries of the world capitalist economic system. In many regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America per capita food production is gradually declining. At the same time, capitalism spends colossal resources on the arms race. The use of these resources for peaceful purposes would enable the world to deal with many serious socio-economic problems, including the food problem. Bourgeois economists tend to look for the causes of the food crisis in the biological laws of nature, rather than in the socio-economic realm. In fact, the causes of the food crisis can be found above all in the low level of the productive forces in the developing countries compared to that of the developed capitalist countries—the consequence of the predatory exploitation of their economies by the metropolises during the long period of colonialism. American and other monopolies, which for decades exploited the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America and funnelled out their riches, still continue to do so now, leaving the working people in poverty. Looking after their own interests, the imperialist countries do not provide effective assistance to the developing countries in increasing food production and are trying to make trade in food an instrument of realising their political, economic and other interests. The American authorities strive to create especially advantageous conditions for US food exports. American corporations sell a third of their farm exports to the developing countries of Southeast Asia at exorbitant prices. The developing countries see the ultimate solution of the food crisis to be the social and economic transformation of their small-scale fragmented agriculture and making maximum use of the achievements of science and technology.