Food crisis: The need to go beyond blame game

[Karl]

Source: CommodityOnline – 2008-05-10: (Food crisis :The need to go beyond blame game)

NEW DELHI: Food crisis is a global phenomenon. Most of the global governments are worried about food scarcity coupled with increase in prices of essential food items. There are several the reasons behind the price rise. But instead of finding the real cause of the crisis, developed countries blaming developing countries. Most of governments are under threat due to their failure in containing the food bubbles. Way back in 1918, the Japanese government had been uprooted because of rising rice prices that fueled rice riots. Today’s price hikes now threaten political stability in many nations.

A few weeks ago the turmoil of food scarcity led to several deaths in Haiti, a small Latin American country, leading to the dismissal of the prime minister. Average food prices have risen 45 percent in the past nine months. Economists warn that if this condition continues, it would create a big anarchy in the countries where most of the people who spend their 50-60 percent income for the food. Most sub-Saharan African countries fall into that category. The food prices hikes have shaken the governments and led to riots in Egypt, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Cameroon, Burkino Faso, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Senegal. Reports indicate that many countries are signing secret bilateral pact with food secured countries to ensure food availability.

All these show how dangerous the food situation is in developed and developing countries. The present food crisis is mainly because of the policies of developed countries. Droughts, the Western push to use biofuels made from corn to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, increased demand for meat and dairy products pushed the global economy into the food crisis. Thus the policies of developed countries have led to the stagnation of agricultural sectors.

Robert Paarlberg, professor of political science at Wellesley College said, hungry people in the world do not use international food and those who use the international foods are not hungry. Fact is, international food markets, like international markets for everything else, are used primarily by rich, not the poor. In the poor countries of Asia, rice is the most important staple, yet most Asian countries import very little rice. Hunger is caused in these countries not by high international food prices, but by local conditions, especially rural poverty linked to low productivity in farming.

[Corey]

Thanks for the info but truth behold I can't do anything about it personally I have a hard time making my own ends meet. Would like to do gardening's but no place to put it much less getting it to those who need it more than myself....

Last fall I spent 40$ at farmers market to get my weeks of most foods. This spring I spent 60 for 2/3 of what I bought last fall. I am on disability of 854$ month which is less than 1/2 national poverty level....... I don't have family and I am a loner. how am I suppose to help others with less when I can't help myself?????

We need solutions more than we need the info yet we need info to come up with the solutions......

Here is a solution for others who actually drive .. drive less and DO NOT USE BIOFUELS unless its derived from waste after we use it like waste food that was not consumed before spoiling....

What really is depressing is that due to my disability which leads to financial constraints I am far below the national average for consumption and pollution. I make further effort to reduce even further sacrificing the things I want to do for the good of all. when all I have to do is walk out of my apartment and see waste everywhere where there should be none. Seeing other people doing the things I want to do And having a good time doing it is killing me and making my disability worse..... Along with hating my fellow human even more beings for being the death of the wonderful planet through over consumption (conveniences)........

I have bad health yet I bike everywhere and Its rare to see others on bikes who are better off in both health and money......

[Johnny Electriglide]

This month's NPG Forum Paper was "The Edge of the Abyss", by Lindsey Grant. It went a lot into the energy crunch and a little beyond his "Age of Overshoot". We passed the peak of oil production in May 2005, will reach the same point with coal in 2025, and have 34 years of natural gas left. Food production (with chemical fertilizers and heavy farm machinery) and distribution will be greatly affected by this energy crunching, and also the accelerating effects of global warming, and dimming from soot of coal downwind (like the Maldives from India's soot, losing 10% of production of crops). The increased cutting of the Amazon has led to a feedback loop of increasing desertification in that region, and food production losses. The driving force is over-breeding for the conditions at hand or anticipated. You may not to want to place blame, but that is where most of it lies. Hispanic women still having 4.4 children by 24 years old, moslem women forced to have 7 children by 28, African women still above 6 by their late 20s. From cultural stupidity, attempts at conquest through numbers, or plain low IQ stupidity, they are still driving up demand, which drives up prices and causes shortages which further drive up prices. Governments are the main end owners of energy, yet they can not increase production with increased energy costs making amortization of new refineries unfeasible with dwindling supplies. So called vast sources are proving to be not so vast. Canada's vast tar sands are costing 2 units of clean, expensive energy(natural gas), to produce 3 units of dirty oil energy. No one in the past or even now, seems to want to conserve what is left for the future. Only the few have controlled their breeding since the 1960s when overpopulation's first alarms rang out. Governments put money for social security into general spending funds, forcing one generation to pay for another, and a growth only stupid economy.
Now the first stages of an accelerating combination of effects is being harshly felt with rapid rise of food and energy costs. The prognosis for future effects and costs is even worse than most can imagine, with rationing starting soon.
We have talked about a variety of energy solutions such as solar, tidal, and geothermal, but they do not translate to transportation well. We have talked about women's rights and stayed away from real population quality and quantity control when it was still possible with reasonable "niceness".
The migrations from the economic effects of overpopulation started a generation or more ago, overloading host countries like the USA. We have seen increased pollution and trash, and the effects of increased demands. Not only will 2/3 of the world's people be "water stressed" by 2025, but we will be out of areas to put trash. I feel so sorry for people, like my son, who will be alive during the worsening times to come. Our Presidential hopefuls have no clue as to over-population and overshoot. They talk of reducing greenhouse gases while allowing an unfettered invasion(acts of real war) of low IQ over-breeders. It is so stupid, it is sickening. All it means is the few rich get richer, and the many get poorer, with increasing pollution and depletion. Even with their vast wealth, they can't eat the devaluing money. They can not buy what is not there, or buy a good climate. Even when fish hits 100 dollars per pound, it will still have high levels of invisible mercury. Amid all the fighting and increased diseases, the poor will be dying off, then the old, then the very young. If you are under 40 years old, you will probably see much of it. What I, Lindsey Grant, and many others have been saying for 40 years has fallen on deaf ears too much. My own personal sacrifices of one child and living solar, have been way more than offset by one invading family.

[Dr. Chris E Obinwa]

Johnny,

The policy of most governments affect global food production, not only in the developed countries but also in the developing countries. The world is experiencing hike in virtually everything. The continuous hike in gasoline, as we are made to believe has triggered most hikes. Yes, we should aportion blames to most governments that have politicized and downplayed their responsibilities to carter for their citizenry. It is not the number of children the 'Hispanics' are breeding in the U.S or the number of children the Asians are breeding in the U.K that has contributed to the current food crisis or the overall migrations. America has been able over many years to swallow complex migrants while utilizing cheap labour to its advantage than any country in the world. Whatever the world is facing now in terms of war, terrorism,food shortages and adverse weather conditions are as a result of pitfall in government policies from the 'Super powers'.

If I may ask based on anecdotal, research and my experience in the U.S and Britain, does migration confer any type of benefit at all to the host country?


Cheers,

Dr. Chris E. Obinwa

[rc white]

Australia intends to have about a 300 000 migrant intake this year, this is mainly to address shortages and fill vacancies in skilled and professional jobs.
Australia is in the position of being a major raw materials supplier to China and as such has a booming expanding economy, as well as on average growing enough excess food to export that is said to be equivalent to feeding at least 40 million people.
In the last several years however the drought that has afflicted us means that instead of our usual 1 million tonne plus rice export trade this has gone down to about 70 000 tonnes this year, a million tonnes of rice of the international market must have a not inconsiderable impact.
I do agree that over breeding in certain parts of the world is a problem for food production.
Just the other day on the radio there was a report that the average yield in Africa has been reduced to a third of what it was in the 70's, the major cause of this being that land that was once allowed to lay fallow to recover its nutrients is now used continuously because of population pressure. The lack of education of women who do the bulk of farming is a major factor in this as well as overpopulation, but the influence of very conservative forms of catholicism and Islam mitigates against this education happening if it includes any content about birth control or womens sexual rights.
I think that if one looks at the poorest most backward countries in South America and Africa it is no accident that the Catholic church is prominent in these countries. The prevalent poverty and lack of education mean that the medieval superstition that that institution promulgates and is largely ignored by European Catholics, holds sway.
Much the same thing can be said of Islam in its more extreme forms, in South East Asia we luckily have a very tolerant Suffic form of Islam that allows for real social progress, it is not happening quickly enough however. Just across our Northern border we have the largest Islamic nation on the planet, an estimated 220 million people, that is completely dependent upon wet rice production, a fairly small glitch in the monsoon is all that it will take to trigger a catastrophe of major proportions.
rcw

[Karl]

Some further articles on this topic of food security in relation to sustainable development:

timesofmalta.com - Tackling the food crisis

Food crisis dominates UN Sustainable Development Commission meeting_English_Xinhua

IISDR S @ Sixteenth session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development - 5-16 May 2008 - UN headquarters - New York - US

Press Releases: Global food crisis, Commission on Sustainable Development begins session aimed at tackling issues at centre of unfolding global crises, seeking way to raise food supply

7thSpace - PRESS CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION

[Johnny Electriglide]

Originally Posted by Dr. Chris E Obinwa

Johnny,

The policy of most governments affect global food production, not only in the developed countries but also in the developing countries. The world is experiencing hike in virtually everything. The continuous hike in gasoline, as we are made to believe has triggered most hikes. Yes, we should aportion blames to most governments that have politicized and downplayed their responsibilities to carter for their citizenry. It is not the number of children the 'Hispanics' are breeding in the U.S or the number of children the Asians are breeding in the U.K that has contributed to the current food crisis or the overall migrations. America has been able over many years to swallow complex migrants while utilizing cheap labour to its advantage than any country in the world. Whatever the world is facing now in terms of war, terrorism,food shortages and adverse weather conditions are as a result of pitfall in government policies from the 'Super powers'.

If I may ask based on anecdotal, research and my experience in the U.S and Britain, does migration confer any type of benefit at all to the host country?


Cheers,

Dr. Chris E. Obinwa

Dr. Obinwa, migration only benefits a host country or area if that country or area is below the sustainable long term human population. Just because a place or country is absorbing migrants, or has been, has little to do with if they should ecologically. The harsh reality is that this maximum long term sustainable population hit various regions at various times long ago. On a world scale it was around 1900, and for the USA the early 1920s. Since then everywhere, except for some small remote areas, have been in the state of human population overshoot. In any mammal population this leads to die-off.
Demographically, from a variety of studies, the only ones not over-breeding for the conditions at hand, such as soil and water depletion, have been the highest spectrum of human intelligence, except those overly influenced by culture and religions. My own studies were from 10 years of obituaries, and there were the well documented and hated data collected in the book "The Bell Curve". Lindsey Grant's "Elephants in the Volkswagen" was very good, also, for maximum sustainable human population figures for various standards of living in the world scale and the USA scale in particular.
Acceptance of immigrants or invaders when a host country is past long term sustainable at an acceptable standard of living is stupid in that it will cause everyone's standard of living to go down and lead to first economic hardships, then ecological collapse. This generally starts with loss of pure water, but includes soil depletion and pollution effects as well. Food supply drops, malnutrition diseases rise, as fighting over resources breaks out. The over-compassion and over-tolerance of host countries becomes their albatross and downfall, unless they fight hard for their national identity.
When I re-did "Mammal Populations in Ecological Niches, Including Humans" (1967) in 1995 (unpublished), I realized the cascading nature of the collapse and die-off of the human species. First economic effects, then migrations, and economic effects to the host areas, then shortages, fighting, cannibalism, diseases, ecological collapse, social collapse, government collapse, until few were left. Dr. Leakey proposed human extinction in 1996, and I thought at first this was a 50-50 chance(with speciation the other half). With the acceleration of pollution effects, especially climate change, I now believe the over-breeding that started this mess will probably lead to an uninhabitable biosphere with 87% of species extinction, disruption of the Malenkovitch glacial epoch cycle, and human extinction shortly after 2100, with the main crash still starting in the 2040s and culminating mostly by the 2050s. Small groups will survive for a while as the ELE (geologically) continues. The chances for this not happening are slimmer each day, each extra baby born and each belch of exhaust. The population of humans and their demands can not be reduced fast enough(most likely). Lindsey Grant talks about living in the post fossil fuel world. I have seen Prof. Grant become overly optimistic as he gets older. No one wants to be without hope for our future generations. I think it is very slim indeed, and have reluctantly gotten closer to Dr. Leakey's views.
Immigration now kills the host country in most cases, and the immigrants die with the rest, from their own over-breeding and pollution, like birds fouling their own nests.
I had always hoped a group of strong intelligent humans, in numbers above the genetic erosion limit, would survive through the very long recovery period, and live within the sustainable limits of the biosphere as a matter of culture and religion to do so. Pure Will Power, like my mother said she used to only have two children in the pre-pill days.
With the data coming in on accelerating pollution and climate effects(especially methane releases becoming self-perpetuating), it looks more like a scenario of the Eocene Max with a recovery period of several million years. Intelligent cockroaches in the future? No one will know in this life.
It brings to mind the announcer's words as the Hindenburg fell on fire---"Oh, the humanity!".....................