I have heard that today, we produce food enough to feed 10 billion people.
Yet there are only 7 billion people today; 1 billion is starving; 3 billion is malnourished.
Seeing these stats, it is pretty obvious that either,
us as a race are simple too dumb to figure a way to distribute food to everyone equally,
or we are cynically arrogant
or there is a already being imposed systematic mechanism, which enforces meals to not go through the distribution channel thoroughly [Insert conspiracy theory]…
What do you think?
I finished 1984 for the 3rd time
Also, much of the “food” that is produced is nearly-empty calories (high fructose corn syrup is an example) - it would fill your belly but it would leave you starving for nutrients. If all that was wanted was to feed the world, then we should just take the unprocessed food and distribute it to everyone. That would be both less expensive and far less profitable than what we do now.
No need for conspiracy theories. Greed explains a lot of it. And for many of the worst cases either distribution is interrupted by war, or populations are deliberately being starved by their government or some faction that hates the people being starved. Starvation has been used as a weapon for millennia.
Going off the main topic, that’s a damn good book IMHO provided you have proper grounding in modern sociology and politics (I reread it because I needed some free e-books to try out my new iPad on). It sucked in high school. Fascinating to read and think about several decades after high school.
That’s not a problem in the parts of the world where food is scarce. It’s a problem for us rich folks, but not he poorest of the poor. The problem is corrupt or incompetent governments. Period.
Where are the starving billion and why are they starving? Is it because they are being denied food? By who? Greedy corporations or corrupt (local) governments…or dysfunctional systems where warlords rule the roost? You need to dig in and not just throw stats around.
You exclude quite a bit, including the middle. And there is zero need to resort to loopy conspiracy theories, even vaguely hinted at ones. Food distribution and logistics on this scale is not as easy as you seem to think it is, and much of the real issue is with corrupt local governments and dysfunctional government and local systems and local corruption, along with a heaping helping of thugs and warlords putting their oars in and stealing any aid given them by other, less corrupt and dysfunctional nations. Again, it would help if you identified where this is happening and why it’s happening instead of going off on loopy rants and vague CTs.
That it’s not a big mystery why food is scarce in some places, and people go hungry in those places. If you look into it, you’ll see that most of them are in places where there has been a partial or total breakdown in government, where gangs, thugs and warlords rule, and/or where the government and local system is extremely corrupt (and in some cases, like, say North Korea, they are fucking nuts to boot).
Also, that logistics, especially to areas like that or without decent road/rail/transport systems (usually because of the above previously mentioned reasons) makes it even more difficult to get food to those who need it (let alone to allow them to make their own), and even leaving aside thieving warlords, thugs and corrupt local official types. The root cause of most of the issues you are bringing up is dysfunction at the local level of government.
Why don’t we just have a massive program to give food to the starving poor around the world? To an extent we’ve tried with short-term famine relief. But we ran into the paradox of charity: despite the best of intentions, charity can become counterproductive. As massive corruption and black market diversion has shown, if you give away something valuable for free, you end up creating a market for middlemen to skim a cut off the top. Charity can be the enemy of self-sufficiency, destroying incentive. The main problem with the hungry is that they’re poor, and poverty has proven an intractable problem that we still only have imperfect remedies for.
Food aid programs have sometimes had the unintended side effect of driving local farmers out of business when cheap goods from the west flood their market. It’s a pretty complicated problem without any easy answers. What do you need to make sure everyone gets food.
[ul]
[li]Infrastructure; roads, power, a stable economy.[/li][li]Government; one that protects private property, respects the rule of law, and maintains the infrastructure.[/li][li]Security; people need to know that the infrastructure will be there tomorrow and that they’re government won’t be breaking down any time soon.[/li][/ul]
Is logistics even the problem though? My understanding is that it is the government (or lack thereof) in the affected areas that is the problem. We’re pretty good at logistics. Some of the people being beheaded in Syria right now were trying to get aid to people who needed it.
When armed militiamen are keeping you from delivering food to people they’d rather see starve, money is not the problem.
Food, or the lack thereof, is an excellent weapon. See Ireland and the Soviet Union for two examples.
The United States Military is pretty good at logistics. Companies like FedEx, Walmart, Amazon and Maersk are pretty good at logistics. A lot of places in the Middle East and Africa…not so much.
Yeah. Growing food costs money. Delivering it costs money. Running distribution centers costs money. Are you going to work for free delivering groceries to Rwanda?
“There wouldn’t BE world hunger if you people would live where the fucking FOOD IS!”
-Sam Kinison
