NYT: Don’t Ask How to Feed the 9 Billion - Mark Bittman

[shireen]

Great OP by Mark Bittman about hunger.

At dinner with a friend the other night, I mentioned that I was giving a talk this week debunking the idea that we need to grow more food on a large scale so we can “feed the nine billion” — the anticipated global population by 2050.

She looked at me, horrified, and said, “But how are you going to produce enough food to feed the hungry?”

I suggested she try this exercise: “Put yourself in the poorest place you can think of. Imagine yourself in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example. Now. Are you hungry? Are you going to go hungry? Are you going to have a problem finding food?”

The answer, obviously, is “no.” Because she — and almost all of you reading this — would be standing in that country with some $20 bills and a wallet filled with credit cards. And you would go buy yourself something to eat.

The difference between you and the hungry is not production levels; it’s money. There are no hungry people with money; there isn’t a shortage of food, nor is there a distribution problem. There is an I-don’t-have-the-land-and-resources-to-produce-my-own-food, nor-can-I-afford-to-buy-food problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/dont-ask-how-to-feed-the-9-billion.html

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Soshalizm!

[True Blue Door]

2. The problem is political, not economic.

People aren't given a fair share of the productivity of their nations' territory, so it ends up being ham-fistedly controlled by private entities who sell it abroad and give nothing back except bribes to government officials to avoid paying taxes or obeying local laws.

And wealthy external interests only exacerbate the problem, destroying the political stability of poorer countries with the pressure of their bribery and exploitation.

It's a bit of a conundrum, because for these countries to become politically functional, richer countries' governments have to protect them from their own capitalist class without stifling legitimate, socially constructive business arrangements. The governments of poor countries can't protect their people from determined outside money - the Spice Must Flow. So the sovereign authority that controls that money has to be the one to restrain it, but that never happens.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. Also, in a lot of countries to whom we've

given food, their leaders have taken it and horded it so they could distribute it to their supporters and withhold it from others. Corruption in governments is, I believe, the world's biggest problem, and it really can't be solved as far as I can see.

[True Blue Door]

5. There are conceptual technological solutions.

Any system that can economically connect individuals across the world helps bypass corruption. Microloans are an example that already exists. Some day there will be cheap food printers that can build food out of raw materials accessible in most places.

[LuvNewcastle]

6. I hope I live to see the day when

a lot of this corruption is stopped and corrupt leaders meet justice. It's not enough for me to hope they see justice in the afterlife. I want to see it.

[True Blue Door]

7. A big part of the problem is that some cultures don't even view it as corruption.

They view it as personal loyalty or just good manners. A leader who doesn't use their authority to look after their friends, family, supporters, and their particular identity groups would be seen as a cold-blooded, judgmental, anti-social ideologue who values abstract ethics over personal human relationships, and can't be trusted.

They don't want leaders who extort bribes, and that kind of thieving is how third world people tend to define "corruption." But they ironically may view it as honesty for a leader to negotiate fairly for bribes - as an act of considerateness, giving people a chance to circumvent onerous or inconvenient regulations. They want moderate corruption, not rule of law. Life is usually too chaotic in a poor country for laws to be anything other than pretexts for such negotiations.

[LuvNewcastle]

8. I know we'll never see the day when all corruption stops.

But I would really like to see people who take large sums and fuck over their people, letting them starve so some rich people can get richer, get their comeuppance. That's where we're headed in this country. In fact, it's already happening to the most vulnerable people in our country. We're going down a dark road, and I don't see any daylight ahead.

I can understand how some countries look at bribery the way they do. When I was a kid, the whole board of supervisors in my county was indicted by an ambitious prosecutor. Some of them served time. Most of the illegal activity centered around doing favors for people in the county. If we needed shells for our driveways (we use shells down here like they use gravel in other places), all we had to do was call our supervisor and it would get done. That, of course, was using county property to benefit private citizens, so it was illegal, but most of us didn't see the harm. There were other things they did, but it was mostly petty shit like that.

That kind of corruption will always be around, and it isn't what I mean when I talk about corruption. I'm talking about chemical companies bribing politicians and poisoning the environment, or leaders taking bribes in poor countries and selling off water rights and other resources so that the people have to pay a premium for it. I wouldn't care if people like that were hanged. It's utterly disgusting to me and it makes me so I angry I don't even have words for it.

[True Blue Door]

11. The worst of the worst are protected by the wider ecosystem of corruption.

Everyone they've ever bribed or been bribed by would be endangered if they're prosecuted. It's a web of relationships. They only allow someone to be sacrificed to public anger after carefully isolating them.

And the kind of fanaticism needed to unravel such networks as a whole can be just as dangerous to the public, if not more so. The United States, for instance, was much more politically corrupt in the early 20th century than it is today, at least on a day-to-day basis. None of this PAC crap, fundraising dinners, revolving doors and lobbying gigs, etc. - just bags of cash delivered by hand and a guy telling you what their boss wants. J. Edgar Hoover took it upon himself to ensure that the FBI would be air-tight against that kind of corruption, and largely succeeded - but he only did so by holding himself above the law, accumulating illegal dirt on every public figure in America, and running the FBI as his personal secret police and Inquisition against "subversives."

[babylonsister]

3. Teach everyone to farm, or raise food,

be it cattle, chickens, frogs, whatever. And to care for the land while we're at it.

I hate to think we all need $20 bills. That would only complicate a lot of lives.

[Aerows]

9. There is also

overpopulation. Overpopulation is it's own chunk of this problem.

[MH1]

10. To some people, the problem is only money, no matter how many billion people there are.

I wonder if this guy thinks the planet can support 10 trillion? No? Then where does he think the line is drawn, I wonder.

When are there JUST NOT ENOUGH F*KING RESOURCES TO FEED EVERYONE?

I confess I don't know. But I believe that the downward spiral of the ecosystem is well underway, and I don't know if we can feed 9 billion people forever.

On the other hand, I expected a completely different answer to why we didn't need to worry about how to feed 9 million.