On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:13:41 -0500, modom (palindrome guy) wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:40:15 -0500, "Pete C." >
> wrote:
>
>>
>>"modom (palindrome guy)" wrote:
>>>
>>> http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...917458,00.html
>>>
>>> Fun facts about our food ystem:
>>>
>>> 1. "our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels,
>>> more than any other sector of the economy."
>>>
>>> 2. "According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their
>>> incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966." Which sounds good except fo:
>>>
>>> 3. "A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a
>>> dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of
>>> soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh
>>> fruit."
>>>
>>> 4. "When runoff from the fields of the Midwest reaches the Gulf of
>>> Mexico, it contributes to what's known as a dead zone, a seasonal,
>>> approximately 6,000-sq.-mi. area that has almost no oxygen and
>>> therefore almost no sea life."
>>>
>>> 5. "The USDA estimates that Americans throw out 14% of the food we
>>> buy, which means that much of our record-breaking harvests ends up in
>>> the garbage."
>>>
>>> Recommended reading.
>>
>>Have you considered the fact that this "energy intensive food system" of
>>ours also is responsible for feeding other countries through the massive
>>amounts of foreign food aid we ship out?
>
> Here's yer numbers Bubba.
>
> Total USA food aid to developing countries amounts to about $2 billion
> a year on average. From the Center for Strategic and Indernational
> Studies, http://forums.csis.org/africa/?p=104 :
>
> "The U.S. Government is the world’s largest international food donor,
> spending since 2002 an average of $2 billion per year on food aid that
> benefits more than 65 countries, most of them in Africa. For all this
> largesse, U.S. food aid barely makes a dent in the problem; it affects
> an estimated 11 percent of the planet’s chronically hungry. Moreover,
> a growing disconnect is occurring between spending and results. As
> demand continues to climb, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
> has found that “rising business and transportation costs” have lead to
> a 50 percent decline in delivered U.S. food aid in the five years
> preceding 2007."
>
> That's a lot of moolah unless you consider the Federal budget. The
> total budget request for the last year of the Bush administration was
> $2.9 trillion.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Un...federal_budget
>
> Disregarding the $900 billion more than $2 trillion in that budget
> number (because I'm lazy) USA food aid would seem to have totaled one
> thousandth the total expenditures requested by the Bush Administration
> in 2008. Unless you factor in the costs of a couple of wars that are
> not in that budget, and in that case we got an even more miniscule
> fraction to consider.

that's because the rest of the budget is absorbed by welfare bums.

your pal,
blake