Okay, GOB
I recently put up a post on BlogHogger about environmentalism; how environmentalists tend to be paranoids who overreact to what problems Earth has (that's putting it roughly). Being of a political nature and on BlogHogger, it sparked some debate. Compared to some of the other debates that spring up there, it's small potatoes, but anyhoo... The debate, as usual, was sparked by our ever-arguing friend God of Biscuits. Somewhere in the discussion came up the issue of solving world hunger. GOB assumed that we, being the merciless, bigoted Christians we are, wanted to keep all Third World countries third world. Naturally, we disagreed. In response to my particular two cents, he said that if I truly did want to do something about world hunger, why wasn't I out proposing a certain simple idea that could solve world hunger? Well, I said, all right then, I will.
The idea, actually, is one that I highly doubt could work, because it just seems too simple and too obvious. But even so, something needs to be done, and it's better than nothing. It's simply this: If my statistics are correct, only about 2% of America's population is needed to farm and create the food needed by both them and the other 98%. That's a lot of food being produced by not a lot of people. And, in fact, says a commentor on BlogHogger, America is producing too much food. The government is paying farmers, via subsidies, not to grow food. Why? Why is it that this extra food isn't being shipped off to these impoverished countries? If we shipped off the surplus to Africa and South America and all those other impoverished places, that would probably help--if not solve--the hunger problem considerably. Duh. Why isn't this being done? I'm sure it's been tried. Why hasn't it worked? One point that was made was that certain countries in Africa, for example, won't accept food because it's genetically modified. Jeez. Many people may think that the world hunger problem is not being solved because the richer countries of the world are too lazy and too heartless to do anything about it. I would beg to differ. The richer countries are taking all sorts of steps to try and help, the problem is that various governments of the poor countries are either too stupid, too cruel, or too...I dunno, proud...to accept our contributions.
The idea, actually, is one that I highly doubt could work, because it just seems too simple and too obvious. But even so, something needs to be done, and it's better than nothing. It's simply this: If my statistics are correct, only about 2% of America's population is needed to farm and create the food needed by both them and the other 98%. That's a lot of food being produced by not a lot of people. And, in fact, says a commentor on BlogHogger, America is producing too much food. The government is paying farmers, via subsidies, not to grow food. Why? Why is it that this extra food isn't being shipped off to these impoverished countries? If we shipped off the surplus to Africa and South America and all those other impoverished places, that would probably help--if not solve--the hunger problem considerably. Duh. Why isn't this being done? I'm sure it's been tried. Why hasn't it worked? One point that was made was that certain countries in Africa, for example, won't accept food because it's genetically modified. Jeez. Many people may think that the world hunger problem is not being solved because the richer countries of the world are too lazy and too heartless to do anything about it. I would beg to differ. The richer countries are taking all sorts of steps to try and help, the problem is that various governments of the poor countries are either too stupid, too cruel, or too...I dunno, proud...to accept our contributions.
posted by James at
9:06 AM
