FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - The collusion of federal regulators and Monsanto

J. Clarke[_2_]

In article >,
says...
>
> On Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:56:28 -0700, Ranee at Arabian Knits
> > wrote:
>
> >In article >,
> > Landon > wrote:
> >
> >> Do yourself a favor before arguing this. Look up "World Starvation"
> >> and start reading the numbers involved around the world.
> >
> > And do yourself a favor and learn what the reasons behind that
> >starvation is. It isn't population. It is corrupt governments,
> >political policies that harm workers and farmers and families.
>
> You and I are saying the same thing differently.
>
> Taking the political situations into perspective, those countries with
> the worst starvation would be much better off if they would lessen
> their populations so that even considering the politics, there would
> be more food for everyone.
>
> The politics are not going to suddenly change into something that will
> allow more food per/person.
>
> IF there were less people in the worst of the cases, then there would
> HAVE TO BE more food per/person.
>
> In that case, population is an absolute factor.

The countries with "the worst starvation" have relatively small
populations. I don't see how reducing them further will address the
problem.

You might want to read up on the history of Zimbabwe from 1990-2010--
it's a good case in point. In 1999 it was a net exporter of food. Now
it can't feed itself, not because the population has grown but because
government policies pretty much destroyed agriculture. They had another
change of government last year and things seem to be improving but it
will take a long time to undo the damage.

Something similar happened in China during Mao's "Great Leap Forward",
and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

Right now the major famine in the world is in central Africa and is due
to a drought. While several of the countries in the region have had
significant population increases in the past 10 years, those were due to
taking in refugees from Darfur and the like and other than shooting half
the population there is little that can be done to "reduce the
population".

In any case, there is plenty of food to feed those populations
available, it just isn't in those countries.