[Newsbot]

Title: The global crisis that no one is talking about
Category: World
Posted By: Strutz
Date: 2010-05-19 19:55:43

[Strutz]

What I found most startling about this article was this section:

$1:

Meanwhile, worldwide emergency food reserves are extremely low — barely 90 days for wheat, even less for rice — a state of fragility that nations have promised to correct, but have not.

The situation is almost certain to guarantee more panics in the near term, especially as today's wildly changing weather patterns leave key crops more vulnerable in many regions.

As for the longer term, it scarcely bears thinking about, but think we must.

Sure, the world produces more food every year, but that growth is close to a stagnant one or two per cent increase.

This simply can't go on. An extraordinary agricultural supply revolution is needed to prepare the world for the three billion more mouths to feed by 2050, up from six billion to around nine

[KorbenDeck]

Birth Control pills, hand them out like candy.

[saturn_656]

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

Birth Control pills, hand them out like candy.

Pfft... the solution is always more money from the G8.

[Dragom]

Hunger and poverty... Thats the problem?

People are leaving pathetic little dirt farming villages to live in the city.

They register as poor and hungry now because they register at all.

And because they are leaving the village now children are a burden and not a handy source of cheap labour. So now they will have less children.

The problem that solves its self is no problem at all.

[martin14]

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

Birth Control pills, hand them out like candy.

agreed.

without dealing with the overpopulation issue in many of these countries,

any kind of food aid or programs will only exacerbate the problem.

[Public_Domain]

[andyt]

Oh, well. The thinking goes that Canada needs lots more people to be economically viable, so we can just ramp up our immigration and take the surplus from the places that can't provide their own food. I mean look at how much empty space we have in Canada - we should be able to take in at least a billion people no problem.

[Bruce_the_vii]

The issue of the burdgeoning population and world resources is on everyones mind. I talk to lots of people about politics and there is this worry about such. Everyone has their own take. Some people think there's going to be a break down in civility in one way or another.

My own solution is the government should impose a carbon tax of $35 a tax payer but turn around and spend the money on research on resource issues. The carbon issue is too limited ad the problems are broad. You are not going to be able to fix the carbon problem with a tax so just do research. Searching in the labs for a breakthrough would be cheap. Genetic engineering of plants. Food, fuel and plastic from cellulose.

[CommanderSock]

I know it goes against the grain of basic economics, but many of these "starving" countries actually have ample food and arable land, to their detriment they choose to compete with Europe's heavily subsidized farms.

Bad idea.

They need to stop listening to Europe and subsidize their own farmers. Malawi went from starvation to food exporter in the region within 4 years of heavy subsidies, and now their president is pushing for pan African farm subsidies. Good idea.

Most of these people need to stop worrying what Europe and America have to say. Especially Europe, which is heavily reliant on 3rd world countries for many of its resources, they should be the ones at the mercy of these meetings not the other way round.

[BartSimpson]

Mr_Canada Mr_Canada:

More evidence of the focus being money, not people.

More people died because of the communist agricultural policies of the past 100 years than have died in all of the wars of that same period combined so if you're trying to push your pathetic philosophy as a solution don't. It's a proven catastrophe everywhere it's been tried and trying it one more time won't make it work any better than it did any other time it was tried.

That's why China, North Korea, Vietnam, Venezuela, and etc. are all dependent on food grown by eeebil capitalist farmers in the USA and Canada. If it were not for us, most of the world would be hungry right now.

[CommanderSock]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Mr_Canada Mr_Canada:

More evidence of the focus being money, not people.

More people died because of the communist agricultural policies of the past 100 years than have died in all of the wars of that same period combined so if you're trying to push your pathetic philosophy as a solution don't. It's a proven catastrophe everywhere it's been tried and trying it one more time won't make it work any better than it did any other time it was tried.

That's why China, North Korea, Vietnam, Venezuela, and etc. are all dependent on food grown by eeebil capitalist farmers in the USA and Canada. If it were not for us, most of the world would be hungry right now.

That's not true.

Brazil alone accounts for 25% of global food production. China is the largest producers food in the world, but not much of it is exported outside of Asia comparatively to the USA or Canada due to its large consumer base.

[andyt]

I don't believe Brazil has state owned agriculture, and China boosted it's food production by privatizing it. But what's also not needed is US style agri-business that throws so many people off the land. What's most efficient are family owned farms. But we can do all we want about increasing productivity - the green revolution, based on oil has run out of steam. If we don't want people to starve we need to stop producing so many of them. Taking the world back to about 3 billion would be a good idea.

[bootlegga]

KorbenDeck KorbenDeck:

Birth Control pills, hand them out like candy.

That might work if the Americans weren't always cutting aid to countries that try and use birth control.

[bootlegga]

One of the biggest reasons many of these poor countries can't grow enough food is because they don't have enough water. Agriculture consumes somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of a nation's water, and for many countries in Africa and the Middle East, water is already in short supply.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers for that shortage either. The vast majority of the world's freshwater is in the northern hemisphere. Coastal nations can build desalinization plants, but they consume fossil fuels like crazy.