A/HRC/25/57 structural adjustment policies resulted in a retreat of the State from agricultural development. It was anticipated that trade liberalization and the removal of price controls would encourage private investment, making up for the reduction of State support. Overproduction in the highly subsidized farming sectors of rich countries put downward pressure on agricultural prices, however, discouraging the entry of private investors into agriculture in developing countries. If there was private investment at all, it went to a narrow range of cash crops grown for export markets. 11. The consequences are well known. Because small-scale farming was not viable under these conditions, many rural households were relegated to subsistence farming, surviving only by diversifying their incomes. Others migrated to the cities, a rural exodus that in Africa accounted for at least half of all urban growth during the 1960s and 1970s and about 25 per cent of urban growth in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, the dependence of low-income countries on food imports grew significantly. Many of the least developed countries are still primarily agricultural, yet, in part because they have to repay their foreign loans in hard currency, they export a narrow range of commodities and therefore find themselves highly vulnerable to price shocks on international markets for these products. Their food bills have soared – the combined result of population growth and a lack of investment in local agricultural production and food processing to meet local needs. When the prices of agricultural products suddenly increased in 2008 in the wake of higher oil prices and speculation, the least developed countries found themselves trapped. The imbalances in the food system, which had been building up over the previous forty years, suddenly became visible, and the human consequences too important to ignore (see A/HRC/9/23 and A/HRC/12/31). 12. Indeed, many least developed countries have succumbed to a vicious cycle. As they were confronted from the 1960s to the 1990s with strong population growth and rural-tourban migration, their governments had no choice but to depend more on food aid or to import more food products. This made it even more difficult for their own farmers to make a decent living from farming, as they faced increased dumping of heavily subsidized foodstuffs on domestic markets. In effect, the import of low-priced food products functioned as a substitute for improved wages for workers in the non-agricultural sectors, and for the establishment of social protection floors for all. As the Special Rapporteur noted in the report he prepared following his mission to WTO (A/HRC/10/5/Add.2), this was perhaps a convenient solution so long as the prices of basic food commodities remained stable or were declining. However, with higher and increasingly volatile prices, it results in new threats to the right to food of net food buyers and is a recipe for social and political instability. Furthermore, the increased reliance on food imports is a major cause of “nutrition transition” in the developing world, by which nutritionists mean the shift to processed foods richer in salt, sugar and saturated fats – foods that have a long shelf life and are attractive to urban populations and younger generations, but are often less nutritious and less healthy.17 III. What food systems are expected to deliver 13. There is broad agreement on the diagnosis summarized above. Indeed, it is this diagnosis that explains the major efforts to reinvest in the agricultural sector in low-income countries since 2008, to do so in a more sustainable way, and to take nutrition into account in agricultural policies. These efforts include significant increases in public budgets 17 A/HRC/10/5/Add.2 (mission to WTO), para. 32; A/HRC/19/59/Add.1 (mission to China), paras. 20 and 21; A/HRC/19/59/Add.2 (mission to Mexico), para. 50; A/HRC/19/59, paras. 32–35. 7