The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has given considerable importance to furthering the development of food balance sheets, reflecting their usefulness in analyzing the food situation at the level of individual countries. Food balance sheets present a comprehensive picture of the pattern of a country's food supply during a specified reference period. The first attempts at preparing food balance sheets date back to World War I. Food balance sheets were the major source of data when, in 1936, at the request of the League of Nations Mixed Committee on the Problem of Nutrition and its Sub-Committee on Nutritional Statistics, a systematic international comparison of food consumption data was prepared.
Source category: International Organisation
| Reference description | FAO, 2001, 'Food balance sheets. A handbook', Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. |
| Originally Published | Last Updated | 29 Jun 2018 | 04 Jan 2021 |
| Knowledge service | Metadata | Bioeconomy |