open Democracy News Analysis - Food Crisis (2008) - Comments

Francesco Sinibaldi on "Ethiopia: the tears and the rains "

Francesco Sinibaldi — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:28:07 +0100

At the first opportunity...

In this period,
and in its true
light, the sound
of a picture forgets
and emotion in
the care of a faith;
a candle reappears,
a delicate silence
remembers a river
and then, at the
first opportunity,
I'll love you my
darling.....

Francesco Sinibaldi

postmaster on "Ethiopia: the tears and the rains "

postmaster — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:58:13 +0100

This is the true cost demanded by those in our society who deprecate (strongly) any perceived threat to their 'right' to drive 4x4's - etc.

Jim Monaghanin on "Ethiopia: the tears and the rains "

Jim Monaghanin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:51:30 +0100

"The government is trying. It has introduced a safety-net system"

I wonder does waging a war in Samalia detract from feeding their own people.
The ability of these poor states to wage war while their people starve is depressing. The willingness of other states to provide arms and credit to buy them makes them complicit.
After a promising start this regime is looking very similar to the old one

Not logged in on "The food economy's missing link"

Not logged in — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:44:40 +0100

Thanks for mentioning meat, and not only the modern issue of biofuels together with the global food crisis.

According to various studies, 100 million tons of grain are being diverted to make biofuel this year, but over seven times as much (760 million tons) will be used to feed animals to produce meat. Depending on the type of animal, it takes up to, and sometimes more than, 10 plant calories to deliver 1 meat calorie. Meat consumption is therefore by far the biggest waste of grain globally.

Possible ways of future nutrition without livestock are presented by the FutureFood-project.

Not logged in on "Development in a downturn"

Not logged in — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:43:58 +0100

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

National and global development downturn obviously is a problem that most people, if not all are worried about. Post-modern and post structuralist changes of contemporary times are not easy to manage at the national and global levels. Development measured in terms of growth is very cyclic. There are "up" and "downs" in the processes. Unfortunately at the same time, reducing poverty and inequalities nationally and globally is necessary, which the MDGs appear to sign in for. One source of the narrative, which could in theory be thickened in this context, wise probably to look closely into is Antonio Gramsci. But that will depend on the extent in which we see and agree that the "old" is dying, and that the "new", that is to be born can be born if there is the will. Let us take this as a metaphor! Clearly we have ready the "doctors", "midwives" and "nurses" to deliver the new conflict-free. All we need is mobilize the courage to deal with the practice and morale. Institutions are important for the former and social justice, among others for the latter. The children of Adam and Eve, we are. It can never be perfect for sake of the "forbidden" fruit they ate, but we can learn from the painful experiences thereof to moderate more and share [equitably].

A humble commentator [Lawrence Efana] Finland!

Not logged in on "The world’s water future"

Not logged in — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:18:16 +0100

I have been following the human "..race to oblivion for at least four or five decades. In your article you say :
"Something that needs to work is not working. The enormity of the challenge of (for example) sustaining the population of burgeoning cities while producing more food and more energy crops without destroying the natural environment is recognised"
WHY do you assume that the cities will continue to "burgeon", and why you do NOT SUGGEST what needs to be done to STOP this insane growth ?
The only section of humanity which "profits" from this idiotic "Shovelling Fuel to a Runaway Train" ( read the book by Brian Czeck !) are the money speculators who like any other form of PARASITES thrive on the misery of others. We must STOP any further growth, both numerically and/or "economically" and create a Steady State Economy , at a SUSTAINABLE level of Earth.
Dan Kustudich dankusti@eastlink.ca

spamlet on "The world food summit: a lost opportunity "

spamlet — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:35:48 +0100

Good grief!

Yet another 'solution' to world food poverty that does not contain even a single mention of the spiralling world population and declining resources! Blinkers decidedly seem to be the order of the day among food and environment pundits.

In a future, that may seem distant to the writer but must surely come to pass (unless some other major catastrophe intervenes), fossil liquid fuel/organic compound feedstocks, will have been consumed. If that leaves the planet with an atmosphere in which plants can still thrive, there will be only one source of the organic compounds on which the chemicals industry which underlies much of what we now think of as civilised life, depends: plants; not just biofuels 'bio-pretty-much-everything'.

One way or another, this means fewer people. Shame that we only have conferences like the one mentioned here, which amount to blame throwing, and lobbying for an ever greater gearing up of food production to assist in the spiralling of world population: so ensuring that the problems faced in the future will be orders of magnitude greater than they are now.

The 'lost opportunity' decried by the author, pales into insignificance besides what is to come, as 'economists', 'environmentalists', 'humanitarians' and the media, try to force an infinity of humans upon a finite world.

By all means, let's have that organic future - including a necessary allocation for 'biofuels' - but, until you are prepared to have a sustainable population as well, you are doing no more than discussing the menu on the Titanic.

bermann on "The world’s food insecurity"

bermann — Sat, 31 May 2008 21:21:09 +0100

We need to get serious about resolving global warming the right way! Governments the world over are desperately trying not to deal with the real issues because they want economic growth and stability.

And what happens when a few good men stand back and do nothing? You end up with a serious crises on your hands.

Governments falsely believe they can deal with global warming and at the same time maintain an economical status-quo where no-one have to cut back and we carry on as before.

Ethanol together with many other half-hearted solutions are hailed as 'green' alternatives. But these so called 'green' solutions are together with rising oil prices the exact factors that will jeopardise the economic stability so desperately sought by our politicians!

So, Governments needs to get serious. And as individuals we need to take urgent responsibility for our own emissions.

In support of this argument, Carbon-info.org has just released a new accurate carbon footprint calculator, which allows anyone with a PC to calculate, monitor and actively manage (i.e. reduce) their personal emissions over a period of time. See...

http://www.carbon-info.org/green_software/software_003.htm

We need to urgently reduce our reliance on big cars, long haul flights, wine from California etc. etc. True - we need to more towards a low carbon economy true, but far more important is it that we urgently move towards a low energy society.

Flemming Bermann (Chairman - Carbon-info.org)

markomac316 on "The world’s food insecurity"

markomac316 — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:19:25 +0100

Quote:

Supply and Demand is not going to go away as a basic driver of prices.

Food and water are the exception to supply and demand.
Unlike other commodities the demand for these goods will never decrease as they
are essential for human survival. Governments need to intervene and subsidize
the cost of these goods in order to prevent global hunger and the push pull
factor that will occur with rising food prices.

aneesto on "Russia: life on the poverty line"

aneesto — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:13:59 +0100

Yes that's the worst thing about any food crisis that it touches mostly thhose who already how not much. And this article also reminds me clearly that in Russia in a country that is known for its elites being extremely affluent there exist still people that really need help, and not only particular African countries face such challenges but also those countries that seem to be developed.

opendemocracy on "Russia: life on the poverty line"

opendemocracy — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:49:45 +0100

This is a very engaging account, thank you.

It makes me think, as inflation rises throughout the world, that the vulneralbe, those who lose, really are those on fixed incomes, with no way of negotiating a position for themselves any longer. You show how monthly inflation can completely disrupt a state pension that is set annually or quarterly. The sorts of hardship you describe will, I think, be spreading around the world with the new inflation.

Tony

spamlet on "The food economy's missing link"

spamlet — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:22:28 +0100

(Apologies Tony, I had not noticed this thread was still going.)

The point I am making is not that population control can address the current situation, but that experience has shown that a long history of attempts to address such situations has not resolved them, and cannot do so when there is no attempt to ensure that populations are tailored to the environmental conditions that support them. Not only that, but also to ensure that those populations are tailored to fit what those conditions are likely to be in the foreseeable future. Only measures to control both sides of the growth equation – economics AND population – can possibly succeed. As each of these is the driver of the other and the outcome is the perpetual spiral of crises we now see, both must be tackled simultaneously.

As in all things ‘planning’ the tendency is to simply let ‘the market’ decide, and in the case of population, let the food supply/market decide. Let population rise so that, in much of the world it is always teetering on the borderline between the barely adequate, and starvation (And thereby as a ‘spin off’ ensuring that there is a handy supply of labour ready to work for next to nothing.), so that a minor fluctuation in supply or price causes an instant catastrophe. When the inevitable happens, add a temporary new supply, after a massive international campaign, then watch the same conditions develop again. We become locked into a continual cycle of crisis management where every ‘success’ simply ensures a bigger crisis in the future.

There was a time when this plain truth was widely recognised and there was a great movement towards fertility management, combined with education, in an attempt to control global population growth, and break this cycle. Over the last half century, however, as population has mushroomed, cornucopian economics has replaced the old concerns with an absurd false certainty that ‘the market has always provided: therefore the market will always provide’. With climate change accelerating, and key resources in terminal decline, still the ‘economists’ hold sway over the argument and urge ever faster attempts at growth and consumption in order to ‘correct’ the ‘market glitches’ that have resulted in any particular ‘food crisis’. An agricultural sector that has undoubtedly worked miracles in the past is now confidently expected to be able to supply half again as much food in the future, at the same time as the resource base that made the earlier miracles possible is rapidly disappearing! How many gamblers would bet on the miracle every time? How many of them would stake their lives and their children’s children’s lives on it? How many would make this bet despite knowing that those past ‘miracles’ have only served to maintain a consistent 1/3 of the global population in food poverty, rather than to move them out of it? Well, that is what our leaders and their favoured advisors are doing on all our behalves.

As if the situation was not bad enough, there has arisen a branch of the new ‘econo-cornucopian religion’ whose only function seems to be to try and prevent any measures being taken to avert this, and other, similar crises, through sensible measures to allow populations to fall to sustainable levels. Any person or organisation that dares to even suggest that infinite growth of population and economy is an impossibility in a finite world, is (or has been) made the subject of ridicule in the wider media and even denied access to the more ‘respectable’ platform of the various BBC outlets.

It is from the econo-cornucopians that the ‘message’ comes that we have a ‘problem’ of declining populations in parts of Europe (Not that this has any bearing on the overall global population curve: it is the ‘fertile’ nations that are contributing the bulk of the curve, and any declines in a few EU countries will make no difference: and, as is demonstrated by the massive attempts at immigration from these countries into Europe, they are quite capable of very rapidly filling up any ‘slack’, given the opportunity.).

As has been noted in the recent House of Lords report on the economics of migration, the oft mooted ‘problem’ of ‘our aging populations’ requires nothing more than a rise in retirement age to begin a solution. I would argue that an economy is nothing more than the balance of accounts of a population, and could, if so desired, be tailored to suit , whatever its size. There is, of course, little hope of this, while the cornucopians are allowed to call all the shots: which sadly, they are: so we have constant demands for more population, so we can go on expanding the deified ‘Economy’ into an ever bigger bonfire of the world’s resources. And so that there will always be an increasing number of have nots to suffer crises like the current ones.

I might add that the ‘econocornucopian argument’ does not restrict itself to the traditional economic sector, but also pervades the bulk of otherwise ‘environmental’ organisations. It is a brave soul who suggests to CPRE or FoE officials, for example, that they really ought to be considering population dynamics in their campaigns! No: to a man these will all contend, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that all we need to do is distribute resources more fairly and any number of extra mouths can be fed; land for housing can be found and so on. Why they think that millennia of failed efforts in this respect can suddenly be turned to success at a time of accelerating global crisis, is a source of great wonder and amazement to me. That they think they can do this and then the crisis will go away is just mind-boggling!

To have no care to the damage one is inflicting on one’s surroundings, is to forfeit the claim to ‘sapiens’ that distinguishes our species from the genera of ‘animals’. In nature, resources are conserved by predation: grazers are kept on the move, so that they do not often get the opportunity to completely destroy the resources on which they, and their descendents, depend (Islands, where man has introduced deer etc. being the usual ‘opportunities’ to witness the inevitable catastrophic crashes.). Man is like a grazing herd with the wolves/lions etc. removed, we are stuck in one place (Earth) and nothing is controlling our growth. Unless something is done to (and probably even if we do) reverse population growth, we will soon have exhausted everything that supports us, and then our numbers will rapidly crash. This is how nature and simple mathematics treats animals that get out of line. The tragedy, is that the one species for which this did not have to be the way, is determined that nevertheless, it shall be.

I trust you now know where I stand on this issue.

If you want to read more about what really can be done to address the problem of ‘the food economy’s missing link’, you could do worse than begin with www.optimumpopulation.org and follow the links from there.

Sincerely,

opendemocracy on "The food economy's missing link"

opendemocracy — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:07:43 +0100

spamlet,

you should reveal a bit more of your position. if you really think that "population is a variable in the immediate problem", you seem to be suggesting that population control to address the _current_ crisis is to be advocated. Can you really mean that? I assume and hope not.

and maybe you can reply to the point about declining populations in many parts of Europe. Does this conform to your view of man "living like an animal"?

Tony

spamlet on "The food economy's missing link"

spamlet — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:40:12 +0100

"the question of world population is not a variable in the context of the immediacy of the problem at hand"

Yes it is: as it always has been:

Any 'success' that you have on this occasion, simply means that more survive to multiply and create the next crisis. Without a proper population policy there is no way on Earth (or anywhere else) that crisis management can do anything other than make it much harder the next time, as we have seen over and over and over again.

Man it seems, despite his 'superior brain', has not the slightest inclination to 'cut his coat according to his cloth': he opts to live and die by the same rules as the rest of the animals. And billions will continue to suffer as a result. If man continues to live like an animal: he will continue to die like one.

opendemocracy on "The food economy's missing link"

opendemocracy — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:47:55 +0100

Thank you for the nutritional clarification, abuelita42pj. I am working a small numerical model into shape to give a slightly more precise answer to the question: "how much could we reduce food prices by reducing the frequency of our meat consumption". Can you give some advice on what a meat minimising but balanced diet would look like, maybe separating adults and children?

spamlet --- the question of world population is not a variable in the context of the immediacy of the problem at hand. the question of what the population should be is deeply difficult. I take great comfort from the thought that improving girls' and women's education is a good in itself and the best way to reduce birth rates.

Tony