It was set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill on June 9, 1942.
Its major achievement was the multi-nation commodity committees that it set up in 1945, which became the International Emergency Food Council.
The purpose of the Board shall be to co-ordinate and obtain a planned and expeditious utilisation of the food resources of the United Nations.
The Board shall be entitled to receive from any agency of the U.S. Government and any department of the British Government information relating to any matter with regard to which the board is competent to make recommendations to those Governments, and in principle the entire food resources of Great Britain and the United States will be deemed to be in a common pool about which fullest information will be interchanged.William Mabane, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Food, explained to Parliament in May 1943 that, "Food strategy was no mere domestic matter, and a scramble between the United Nations for supplies would be disastrous.
Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, urgently called on Britons to eat more potatoes and less bread.