The 1957 annual report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated that the main trends in the world food and agricultural situation in previous years had been continued during 1956/57. Agricultural production as a whole and food production had again increased by about three percent. In the less developed areas (the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America) food production since 1952 had risen slightly above that in the world as a whole; these areas had shown an increase of twenty percent in net food output in comparison with averages for 1948–52, while the developed regions (North America, western Europe, and Oceania) had shown an increase of fifteen percent. In 1957/58, the report predicted, world agricultural production would continue to increase at approximately the same rate as in the past.