Naar aanleiding van het Siegel artikel over Voedsel, http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.com/2009/02/honger.html deze reacties:En deze: 'This is a comment by Richard K. Moore in Ireland.
rkm@quaylargo.com
This article is good, in that it lays out the multi-dimensional problem of food scarcity. At the same time, the article is blatant elitist propaganda, offering misleading explanations and offering proposals that would only make things worse.
> Today we are witnessing the emergence of a dangerous politics of food
> scarcity, one in which individual countries act in their narrowly
> defined self-interest and subsequently accelerate the deterioration of
> global equilibrium.
In fact, it is the globalization of food markets which has caused the food crisis. A return to a more localized food economy is not 'narrow self-interest', but rather the path to a solution.
> The deteriorating world food situation is not occurring in a vacuum:
> it comes at a time when there is a growing backlog of unresolved
> problems, many of them associated with a failure by developing
> countries to slow population growth.
Here we see the Big Lie about population. The real population problem is in the developed countries, where the per-capita consumption of resources leaves the third world in poverty. Instead of blaming the cause, the Spiegel blames the victims.
> Of all the environmental trends that are shrinking the world's food
> supplies, the most immediate is water shortages. In a world where 70
> percent of all water use is for irrigation, this is no small matter.
Very true. And the reason so much water is used for agriculture is because modern agricultural methods are scandalously wasteful of water. Only by overusing water, pesticides, and fertilizers, are their much-touted high yields achieved. The only real solution is organic farming, as Cuba has proved in practice.
> In addition to losses from erosion, cropland is also being converted
> to non-farm uses....imagine if China were one day to achieve the
> Japanese automobile ownership rate of one car for every two people.
> The country would then have a fleet of 650 million motor vehicles,
> compared with only 35 million today. Since at least 0.4 hectares of
> land has to be paved for every 20 vehicles added to the fleet, this
> would require paving nearly 13.3 million hectares of land -- an area
> equal to half the riceland in China.
This shows the idiocy of pursuing energy-efficient cars as a solution to our problems.
> The bottom line is that new harvest-expanding technologies are ever
> more difficult to come by as crop yields move closer to the inherent
> limits of photosynthetic efficiency.
The problem with this 'bottom line' calculation, is that it doesn't reveal the line items that add up to that bottom line. The problem is not the total amount of production, but rather producing the wrong things. Instead of targeting agricultural production to the needs of people, it's targeted for maximum profits. People in the third world starve because their agricultural resources are preempted to grow export crops. Land is used to grow beef for McDonalds and biofuels for our SUVs instead of food for the people who live there.
> Business as usual is no longer a viable option. The current world food
> crisis can be alleviated only by altering the trends that are causing
> it. We need to go to Plan B. This involves extraordinary measures such
> as stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty,
> and restoring agriculture's natural support systems, including soils
> and aquifers.
Restoring natural support systems is a great idea, and that's the one that is unlikely to be followed up on, as it reduces elite profits.
Instead we'll get phony schemes to stabilize climate (carbon trading), and further blaming of the victims in the third world. And when they talk about "eradicating poverty", what they really mean is continuing the neoliberal policies that have caused the problems.'
rkm@quaylargo.com
This article is good, in that it lays out the multi-dimensional problem of food scarcity. At the same time, the article is blatant elitist propaganda, offering misleading explanations and offering proposals that would only make things worse.
> Today we are witnessing the emergence of a dangerous politics of food
> scarcity, one in which individual countries act in their narrowly
> defined self-interest and subsequently accelerate the deterioration of
> global equilibrium.
In fact, it is the globalization of food markets which has caused the food crisis. A return to a more localized food economy is not 'narrow self-interest', but rather the path to a solution.
> The deteriorating world food situation is not occurring in a vacuum:
> it comes at a time when there is a growing backlog of unresolved
> problems, many of them associated with a failure by developing
> countries to slow population growth.
Here we see the Big Lie about population. The real population problem is in the developed countries, where the per-capita consumption of resources leaves the third world in poverty. Instead of blaming the cause, the Spiegel blames the victims.
> Of all the environmental trends that are shrinking the world's food
> supplies, the most immediate is water shortages. In a world where 70
> percent of all water use is for irrigation, this is no small matter.
Very true. And the reason so much water is used for agriculture is because modern agricultural methods are scandalously wasteful of water. Only by overusing water, pesticides, and fertilizers, are their much-touted high yields achieved. The only real solution is organic farming, as Cuba has proved in practice.
> In addition to losses from erosion, cropland is also being converted
> to non-farm uses....imagine if China were one day to achieve the
> Japanese automobile ownership rate of one car for every two people.
> The country would then have a fleet of 650 million motor vehicles,
> compared with only 35 million today. Since at least 0.4 hectares of
> land has to be paved for every 20 vehicles added to the fleet, this
> would require paving nearly 13.3 million hectares of land -- an area
> equal to half the riceland in China.
This shows the idiocy of pursuing energy-efficient cars as a solution to our problems.
> The bottom line is that new harvest-expanding technologies are ever
> more difficult to come by as crop yields move closer to the inherent
> limits of photosynthetic efficiency.
The problem with this 'bottom line' calculation, is that it doesn't reveal the line items that add up to that bottom line. The problem is not the total amount of production, but rather producing the wrong things. Instead of targeting agricultural production to the needs of people, it's targeted for maximum profits. People in the third world starve because their agricultural resources are preempted to grow export crops. Land is used to grow beef for McDonalds and biofuels for our SUVs instead of food for the people who live there.
> Business as usual is no longer a viable option. The current world food
> crisis can be alleviated only by altering the trends that are causing
> it. We need to go to Plan B. This involves extraordinary measures such
> as stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty,
> and restoring agriculture's natural support systems, including soils
> and aquifers.
Restoring natural support systems is a great idea, and that's the one that is unlikely to be followed up on, as it reduces elite profits.
Instead we'll get phony schemes to stabilize climate (carbon trading), and further blaming of the victims in the third world. And when they talk about "eradicating poverty", what they really mean is continuing the neoliberal policies that have caused the problems.'
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