Feed The Future: "Nearly one billion people endure the misery of chronic hunger..."

[ProSense]

Feed The Future
http://www.feedthefuture.gov/

Nearly one billion people endure the misery of chronic hunger, approximately one-sixth of the world’s population. Responding to the underlying causes of global hunger and food insecurity, at the London G20 Summit in 2009, President Obama announced a global food security initiative that has the support of the world’s major and emerging donor nations, includes strong roles for our multilateral institutions, and is led by partner countries that are ready and willing to develop comprehensive plans and commit their own resources to agricultural and market development.

- more -

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Food_Security_Fact_Sheet.pdf

These initiatives rarely get any attention. Also, aid to Syrian refugees.

Obama announces extra $300 million in aid for Syrians, refugees
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/18/19018208-obama-announces-extra-300-million-in-aid-for-syrians-refugees?lite

Touring Refugee Camp, Kerry Sees Mounting Syrian Suffering
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/world/middleeast/touring-refugee-camp-kerry-sees-mounting-syrian-suffering.html

[pscot]

1. The more food we grow

the more mouths there will be to eat it.

[NoOneMan]

2. Exactly

We need a massive paradigm shift globally in both how we produce and distribute food, and how we reproduce and consume it

[bhikkhu]

3. So why bother?

Actually the argument is a common fallacy. Where food production is highest per capita you find the lowest birthrates. In Europe, the US, in spite of the abundance of food, population growth goes down.

Where food production is lowest per capita, you have the highest birthrates. The Middle East and Africa, where most countries vary from marginally food-poor to desperately food-poor, you have the highest birth rates.

The response to abundance seems to be moderation in child-bearing, while the response to hunger and poverty seems to be the opposite. Counter-intuitive, but well demonstrated.

[pscot]

4. Asking ,"How will we get enough food to feed this growing population?"

is a lot like asking "How will we get enough wood to feed this growing bonfire?"

This idea has been explored at length. Here's a link:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x200559

[bhikkhu]

6. Except that, in this case, food does not drive population growth

Again, its counter-intuitive, but if you look at actual populations and actual food production, including costs and so forth, the correlation is negative, not positive. As far as why that is, the best guess would go back to evolutionary psychology.

I've been trying to remember the school of thought I studied getting into the mechanics of the problem...there were two theorists years ago who stated essentially that food production was the driver of population growth, and then there were strong rebuttals proving pretty conclusively that was not the case, but at the moment the names escape me.

The central thing, however, is that the notion of food driving population growth plays to our intuitions of how it should work, and so easily becomes an assumption. But on the other side of the argument lie all the facts and evidence.

[pscot]

18. The human population is unstainable

We're killing the biota to feed ourselves. Climate change is the most obvious symptom, but there are many other signs that we've run out our string. God help our children.

[ProSense]

5. Because everything is a problem

The problem is a problem. The solution is a problem.

Everything is a problem.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. It's not the abundance of food that does it.

it's education and access to contraception. And any surplus of grain and such is exported. And populations don't outgrow their food supply; if they do there's a quick correction in the form of famine. Birthrates are higher in countries with famine and low food production, but that's because of low life expectancies and high infant mortality (the countries with the highest infant mortality ALSO have the highest birthrates).

[bhikkhu]

14. Education allows women ways to participate in society other than as wife and mother

...and given the opportunity, most women chose alternatives to bearing and raising numerous children. That's the simple explanation.

Recall the desperate anxiety of growing up, in a world surrounded by people all established with place and role and identity, but you have nothing yet. In too many societies no role is offered to girls but to marry and bear children.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. nope. more food does not lead to more people.

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. Of course it does

increase the available food supply and population inevitably increases. You can observe this with rats. Provide an amount of food each day sufficient to feed a certain number of rats, and allow them to breed freely; the rat population will stabilise at around an optimum number. Double the food, and the population will increase, and stabilise. Halve it again, and there'll be a die-off. Humans aren't any different. Our population naturally expands to the limits of our carrying capacity.

[bhikkhu]

15. Then why do the nations that produce the most food have the lowest birthrates?

and the nations most impoverished have the highest??

on edit - I shouldn't be smug, just because I've gone up and down these roads more than a few times and studied the problem a bit. The best book I know on the subject is "Fatal Misconception" by Connelly - very readable, and well worth the time.

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. Because of lower infant mortality?

And because of not being reliant on more children as peasant labour for subsistence agriculture.

[bhikkhu]

19. Neither of those have anything to do with the volume of food available

hence my argument (along with other points) that producing more food doesn't produce more children.

[joshcryer]

8. Aiding Conflict: The Impact of U.S. Food Aid on Civil War

Paper: http://www.econ.northwestern.edu/seminars/Nemmers11/Nunn.pdf

[ProSense]

9. Interesting.

It seems the Feed The Future initiative is not the traditional shipment/storage of food, but more focused on local agricultural development.

[joshcryer]

10. No doubt with GMOs.

[ProSense]

12. Why? n/t

[joshcryer]

17. Because agribusiness still must profit.

If they lose the food waste profit then they need the patent based profit. I've already found sources showing that Monsato is in on Feed the Future.

It's a very lucrative business for biotech.

If you want to help people, truly help them, develop the agricultural programs without a catch and give them money, hard cash, to develop it.

[ProSense]

23. True, but Monsanto is running into a lot of obstacles, and there are many countries involved. n/t

[joshcryer]

24. Yeah right.

They along with 50 other biotech companies are having their way.

[ProSense]

25. What's your solution? This isn't about Monsanto. n/t

[joshcryer]

26. How about patent exemptions?

For a start.

[ProSense]

27. You are not talking about the initiative. You're talking about Monsanto.

Monsanto is not the program.

[joshcryer]

28. I'm talking about Feed the Future allowing agribusiness to screw over people.

Sorry you don't see the forest from the trees.

[ProSense]

29. Monsanto

"I'm talking about Feed the Future allowing agribusiness to screw over people. Sorry you don't see the forest from the trees."

...is having its own problems, and you're focusing on that company, not the initiative.

Monsanto’s climate-resilient crop patent claims rejected
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014533124

Seeing the " forest from the trees" requires not trying to dismiss the initiative because you don't like that Monsanto is participating.

[joshcryer]

30. That's one patent.

Anyone can read my commentary on this including my supporting evidence. It's obvious what's happening here.

[Romulox]

20. The earth has several billion more people than it can sustain. Famine, war and disease are the

inevitable result.

[ProSense]

21. So you oppose feeding people? n/t

[edhopper]

22. One quarter of the yearly income

of the worlds 100 richest people would end hunger.

Think about that. Money that won't change on thing in the lives of these obscenely rich people would change the very essence of the lives of over a billion people.

As a species we have failed ourselves, the very make up of our society benefits the few over the rest.

http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2013-01-19/annual-income-richest-100-people-enough-end-global-poverty-four-times

[sheshe2]

31. Here's a progress report.

Q: What does success look like for Feed the Future?

In 2012, Feed the Future programs reached more than 9 million families; our nutrition programs reached more than 12 million children under five; we helped nearly 7.5 million farmers and other food producers adopt improved technologies or management practices (30 percent of whom were women); we helped boost the sales of agricultural products by more than $100 million, which, in turn, helped increase their incomes; we forged more than 660 public-private partnerships to improve food security from a community level to a global level; and increased the value of agricultural and rural loans overall by more than $150 million.

Read more.

http://blog.usaid.gov/2013/07/behind-the-scenes-interview-w-tjada-mckenna-on-feed-the-futures-progress/

Thanks ProSense, great thread.