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Since its inception at the Hot Springs Conference in 1943, FAO has become the world's foremost information agency on questions in its field, having absorbed the International Institute of Agriculture (Rome), which for forty years gathered and published data on agronomy. FAO has also taken a leading part in improving statistical practices and has laid plans for a world census of agriculture in 1950. In addition, FAO has sponsored a number of conferences to consider special agricultural problems. These included one called to discuss timber, held in C2echoslovakia in April-May, 1947, a special cereals conference in Paris in July, 1947, a twenty-seven-nation meeting on infestation of stored foodstuffs, held in London in the summer of 1947, and a conference on rice held in the Philippines in February, 1948. It is the function of FAO to assist Governments by every appropriate means in their effort to increase food production. To this end FAO is, on request, sending technical Missions to advise individual Governments on their production programmes. The first of these Missions was sent to Greece in 1946, and the second, consisting of ten experts, to Poland in the summer of 1947 to work out proposals for the rehabilitation and development of agriculture and forestry in that country. At the beginning of 1948 an eight-member Mission was sent to Siam to plan increased agricultural production, and a further Mission of six FAO experts was sent to study similar problems in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. There are now more than fifty experts engaged by FAO in this kind of technical field work. During 1947 FAO conducted three field demonstration schools in Europe, one on hybrid corn, one on artificial insemination, and a third on veterinary techniques. These schools were designed to give European agriculturists a chance to catch up on the progress made in their respective fields from which they were cut off during; the war. The third annual conference of FAO, at which New Zealand was represented, was held in Geneva from 25 August to 11 September,. 1947. One of the main decisions of this conference was to replace the executive committee, consisting of individual experts without any mandate from the countries from which they came, by a council made up of eighteen representatives of member countries covering all regions of the world. The Council provides a means for FAO to work directly and continuously with the Governments of the countries represented; it has the power not only to give advice, but also tomake recommendations to Governments members of FAO.