What is really behind the food crisis?

[dcsmart]

We are told that there is not enough food for everyone, that there are too many human beings on the planet and therefore we must all reduce consumption - a handy idea in the hands of the bourgeois propagandists. The real facts and figures reveal that the world produces enough food. So where does the problem lie?

The purpose of this article is to show that the food shortages that afflicted many countries this year are not due to any natural disaster, or to the fact that there are too many human beings to feed. The facts will show this, and we will deal with these later in this article.
Text

http://www.marxist.com/what-is-really-behind-food-crisis.htm




World leaders discuss global food crisis over 18-course meal, 8 July 2008, see also article in Them and Us
G8 leaders discuss food crisis… on a full stomach!
http://www.marxist.com/g8-leaders-discuss-food-crisis-on-a-full-stomach.htm

[asjr]

1. There is not enough of it?

[izquierdista]

4. Read the link

There is plenty, it is the distribution system that is screwed up. As the last paragraph of the article states, "What has to be removed is the system itself."

Those that find themselves on the outside of the global food economy, i.e. subsistence farmers, are in less danger, especially if their crops (cassava, millet, teff) are not ones that are traded (corn, wheat and soybeans). The lack of global demand keeps their government from yanking their supper out from in front of them.

In discussions of this type, I like to post a link to the Lost Crops of Africa series: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309049903.
Volume one is on grains, volume two is on vegetables and volume three is on fruits. If farmers planted these lost crops where they are appropriate, and governments supported this indigenous type of agriculture, world hunger would be gone in a few short years.

[tech3149]

5. I agree with your POV

Distribution is the problem, but I think the solution is locally sustainable communities. If I tore up the lawn and planted food I could feed 100 families and never use a gallon of gas. I'm lucky that I live somewhere that anything you stick in the ground will grow. For those that don't live in such favorable climates, if we all chipped in 10 cents a day we could put them on equal footing with the rest of the developed world.

[izquierdista]

8. We don't have to chip in

All we have to do is quit taking away. People throughout history have been able to live in all sorts of climates, from frozen Greenland to the Australian outback, as long as no one took their food away from them in the form of tribute. During the Irish Potato Famine, meat was still being exported from Ireland to England. Today, many African countries are exporting cash crops to pay debt burdens (another form of tribute) and have no land or labor left over to feed their own people. If they put a fraction of the cash crop acreage back into indigenous crops, their hunger problems would go away after one season.

And I agree with you about tearing out the lawn. I just moved into a new place with a huge lawn, which will in due time turn into edible landscaping.

[dcsmart]

7. great link...thanks

[LaurenG]

11. Some of the larger Churches in the US have been saying the same thing

for many, many years. Back when Churches still tried to help (and I'm sure many still do), I was involved in a group that sent food to third world countries. There is tremendous waste starting at the farms in the US. Our own government would/will pay a farmer not to send their goods to market if there is an abundant crop.

People starve while food rots in the silos in the USA. Very sad.

[msongs]

2. public school kids and kitchens throw out more than 1/2 their food nt

[Warpy]

3. Part of the problem is that in lands of plenty, food is unimportant

enough that we throw out anything that isn't perfect or that we don't wish to eat at that particular time.

The larger part of the problem is that too much food that could feed people in the developing world is fed to factory farmed meat animals in the developed world. Factory farming requires nutritionally dense foods instead of the natural food of free range animals.

My parents were Depression kids who felt deprived if they didn't eat meat three times a day. They developed health problems from such a diet, problems that likely wouldn't have emerged as soon as they did with a more rational diet. My own diet was far lower on the food chain and I escaped those problems for an additional 20 years.

I agree with Bittman: eat food, good food, mostly plants. He further suggests half a pound of meat or fish per person per week as an attainable goal for most people.

Any more than that and you're depriving other people of enough to eat by creating demand for cheap, factory farmed meat.

[dcsmart]

6. as far as throwing food away

i posted this link on here before....it is sad

http://www.stopthehunger.com/

[LaurenG]

10. Sobering

:(

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. I worked night shift as cleanup/maintenance at a McDonalds

.
.
.

We threw out 50 pounds of french fries per 8 hour shift - burgers that were over the time limit - 8 minutes or so - poof - gone to the garbage - 100's of pounds a day

and so on.

This was a fairly small McD's in Bracebridge Ontario.

At the time McD's had over 1200 franchises.

Do the math - that's thousands of TONS of food wasted EVERY DAY -

and that's just ONE franchise

think KFC, Harveys, Wendy's, etc.

And it's not just the fast food places that throw away food -

heck, within the last few decades I see what some people consider "dog food" - "leftovers" in my book fed to pets or just thrown away -

I don't throw ANY food away unless it turns into a bad color/smell.

I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH FOOD WE THROW AWAY!

Sorta a good thing we do though - -

Our Homeless can always find some food in a dumpster or a garbage can . .

(sigh)

[HamdenRice]

12. Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for economics showing famine does not come from lack of food

Unlike most economists, his work is immensely readable for the layman (just skip his appendixes that are full of equations if that's not your thing).

But he has shown that during almost every famine of the 19th and 20th century -- the Irish potato famine, the Bengal famine, the Sahel famine (edge of the Sahara) and Ethiopian famine, there has always been a sufficient supply of food locally available.

As he puts it, famine is not a problem of there not being enough food. Famine is a problem of people becoming too poor to purchase the food that is available.

In other words, famine is a crisis of income, not a crisis of food production.

What confuses most people is that the crisis of income often is started when the harvest of some class of farmers fails, and they don't have enough money to purchase food that is available from other farmers.

But that doesn't mean there isn't enough food around.

[Naturyl]

13. Of course. Pay attention, EVERYONE. This is the big secret. The big trick.

There is no shortage of food or resources. There is no "overpopulation." Neither Republicans or Democrats will tell you this, because the truth endangers extravagant lifestyles on both sides of the aisle.

You're probably thinking that by "extravagant," I mean the rich with their limos, nightclubs, mansions, jet skis, etc. NOPE. While they are undoubtedly guilty as hell, the lion's share of the blame rests on the sainted and much-praised "middle class." Yeah, I mean YOU with your cookie-cutter subdivision home, your SUV, and your 2.5 spoiled children. Yeah, YOU - Obama-voting lifelong liberal. Take a look at your day-to-day lifestyle and tell me exactly, in concrete practical terms, how it is significantly different from that of a Palin supporter?

Hint: it ain't - and THAT is the primary reason why the world is fucked. Wow... Obama's soccer moms beat Palin's soccer moms. What an accomplishment for humanity... lol. How can there EVER be food for everyone while all of you insist on running around with your IKEA discount cards, iPhones, and values which promote "hard work, success and prosperity" as vehemently as any card-carrying Republican does? As long as the vast majority of you (Republican OR Democrat) repeat brainwashed, indoctrinated propaganda practically verbatim, how in hell are we ever going to escape the control of the self-centered ruling class? Or, as I tend believe, maybe you middle-class SUV (and Prius) drivers ARE the real ruling class - and when it comes right down to it, you like the existing state of affairs just fine. Granted, a disease-ridden child starving in Africa (on the TV screen) is quite tragic, but hey, if that's what it takes to keep your Verizon wireless service on and your favorite table at the restaurant open, so be it.

Too intense for some of you, I guess... but there it is. Feel free to be offended, I don't care. I rarely visit DU these days because... well, it should be obvious why, eh?

[Naturyl]

14. I posted this in GD and got completely trashed.

I'm leaving DU. Thanks to all here in the Poverty forum who have been active for years. I may continue to come to this one forum just to visit those of you who post here - but my days of posting in the big DU forums are over. The majority of DU displays attitudes I find objectionable.

[bobbolink]

15. I know exactly what you mean. The "progressive" attitudes are straight out of the Dobson

playbook.

You will be missed. :(

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mntleo2]

17. Please stay ...

...not all DUers are idiots, though sometimes it seems so.

I wrote an article saying I did not feel very sorry for the middle class people involved in the credit card "crisis" and I got trashed some too. But there were good people in the discussion as well and I realized the ones who did the trashing are IGNORAMUSES, and should be ignored, as they didn't have a clue or "got" what I was saying. There were OTHER people who DID get it and knew what I was saying. The "idiots" kept saying stuff like "Well now what are these people going to do when their heat bill comes and they can't pay it?" or "it is the *only* thing I have for the Emergency Room since I don't have the insurance anymore ..." All understandable things, but my point was, LEARN TO LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS LIKE POOR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DOING ALL ALONG (or below it and do without)!

One guy explained something what I realized was the problem with their ignorance: these people had been using their credit cards as their "safety net" and now when that is gone and they try to turn to the safety net that used to be there that no longer is, well they are realizing they have to live "like poor people" and do without because they allowed their ignorance to rule. What a bunch of fools! Still I have been a fool too sometimes, and I have appreciated someone who told me how it REALLY was, even though I listened in "retrospect." I.E. ...Hindsight is better than foresight ...

Well I still say ...Oooo! How tragic! They expected the poor to live without ANY safety net while they had their nice cushions, and judged the poor for their poverty when in fact they refused to see that poverty is an institutionalized situation that is made to keep the rich in a place where they can live off the poor. And that they were NEXT as the rich will use every body they can to keep their billions ...

One woman finally called those crying babies' bluff: She said, "Don't tell me you ALWAYS used your credit cards for emergency rooms and heat bills, you just HAD to have the Sharper Image Towel Warmer, or that vacation to Disney Land, didn't you? Come on!"

Dead silence to her comments and I know it was because she was right.

The point I am making here is the class war is real and I am sorry it is coming home to roost and really I *don't* feel too sorry for the ones being forced to live like poor people because they either stayed silent or wildly applauded the demonizing of the poor. Often they were the same ones harshly judging all the "deadbeats" that are now them. It is based on ignorance. Maybe some of these idiots actually still believe that if you work your butt off and still can't make ends meet, and/or having a bad credit score means you are somehow a lesser human being and immoral are ...well ...idiots. Because they surely have friends, relatives and elders having to live this way now who they prefer not to see. People who have suddenly become invisible as most poor people are. I am sure these elitists blame them too ~ and good riddance for the unfortunate ones who had to find out the hard way these people are cheap, shallow pieces of dog meat that didn't deserve their friendship.

As Barbara Ehrenreich said in last week's NYT, the poor are the "disappeared" and have been for decades. Yes I am mad about it but I also feel very sorry for the ignoramuses. On the other hand, I realize now I could give a crap what they think, I am STILL gonna say it because they will realize in the future when "they" become "us" that we were the canaries in the mine. I feel morally bound to warn them. If they don't listen and be supportive of the poor, well they will wish they did later and perhaps become the activist I have seen come around when "they" became "us."

They just don't want to know and while their practiced "ignorance" is obvious to me, I just know after seeing what I am seeing now they need us to call attention to what is the important message here: they ain't seen nothin' yet!

Cat In Seattle

[Naturyl]

18. Thanks for that.

It made a lot of sense, and I appreciate it.

The post that got me "in trouble" was probably too confrontational and abrasive, admittedly. But I stand by the gist of what I said. So many well-off DUers want to blame "somebody else" for perpetuating poverty, but if the rich and powerful are guilty, the comfortable middle class is complicit.

[Imperfect World]

19. Marxism causes famine. Democracy prevents famine.

Democratic South Korea has lots of food. Marxist North Korea has famine. It's the best "controlled experiment" that the world has ever had on the subject of famine.

"No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy." - Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science

[DeadEyeDyck]

20. If only they would re-open

the soylent green factory.