Frank Lidgett McDougall (1884–1958) was a British-born Australian farmer and economic adviser, now best known for his part in the foundation of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
[5][6] Sidney and Jack planned to farm wattle at Lidgetton in Natal, on a family property, a scheme put on foot in 1906–7.
[1] McDougall moved in 1909 to Renmark, South Australia where there were his half-brothers, and his sisters Margery and Catherine, and farmed a fruit block.
In 1922 Chaffey, McDougall and Charles Edward Devenish Meares travelled to London, to promote Australian dried fruit in the British market.
[11] From the ADFA's point of view, world prices were dropping, in the early 1920s, just when the production acreage was increasing strongly.
After a period in the Prime Minister's Department in 1924, McDougall returned to London in 1925, with part of his time devoted to the Dried Fruits Control Board.
[1] On the Board's publicity committee, he worked with William Smith Crawford, Frank Pick, Harry Levy-Lawson, 1st Viscount Burnham and Woodman Burbidge of Harrods.
[13] In 1927 McDougall suggested that Bruce invite John Boyd Orr of the Rowett Institute to Australia, to advise on animal nutrition.
[14] Boyd Orr and David Rivett were important contacts, connected with another aspect of his London work, liaison with CSIR.
[15] In 1929, Stanley Bruce was replaced as Australia's Prime Minister by James Scullin, and McDougall felt his position in London was insecure under the Labor Party administration.
[1] The watershed in McDougall's thinking on trade came as he prepared for the London Economic Conference of 1933, and reassessed "restriction policies to control plenty in a poverty stricken world".
[18] With Alexander Loveday, McDougall wrote a significant 1935 speech for Bruce to give to the League of Nations Assembly, calling for the lowering of tariff barriers.
The idea has been attributed to John Gilbert Winant; also, on the account given by Gove Hambidge, to the intervention of the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.