We Already Grow Enough Food For 10 Billion People -- and Still Can't End Hunger

[polly7]

By Eric Holt Gimenez

Source: Huffington PostSaturday, May 05, 2012

http://www.zcommunications.org/we-already-grow-enough-food-for-10-billion-people-and-still-cant-end-hunger-by-eric-holt-gimenez

Embracing the current conventional wisdom, the authors argue for a combination of conventional and organic farming to meet "the twin challenge of feeding a growing population, with rising demand for meat and high-calorie diets, while simultaneously minimizing its global environmental impacts."

Unfortunately, neither the study nor the conventional wisdom addresses the real cause of hunger.

Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That's enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050. But the people making less than $2 a day -- most of whom are resource-poor farmers cultivating unviably small plots of land -- can't afford to buy this food.

In reality, the bulk of industrially-produced grain crops goes to biofuels and confined animal feedlots rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Hunger is a political problem not a farming problem. n/t

[marasinghe]

2. i would like to re-word your statement, just a bit.

'Hunger is a greed problem on the part of the wealthy; not an effort problem on the part of the destitute'.

[cbrer]

7. And I would like to slightly reword that.

Because hunger also has a deep political element to it as well. Beyond the manipulation that some wealthy people play with politics.

It is very telling that in a world of so much wealth, huge portions of it remain tied to so few. And gets used as some sort of bargaining chip among nations.

[marasinghe]

18. you are right.

seen it up close, where i came from. 70% of the GNP & the population, was agricultural. yet, roughly the same percentage of the land resources, and the resultant wealth, ended up in the hands of the top 5% - who never stepped into a rice field in their lives, in the line of work. and the same syndrome is apparent at the macro level, globally.

[usrname]

3. World hunger is not due to lack of food

it is due to lack of political will.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

4. “Insects can feed the world;

cows and pigs are the SUV’s, bugs are the bicycles.”

[dkf]

5. Transportation can be a problem also.

[FrodosPet]

6. Unfortunately, the solution to one problem...

...is the cause of another.

To get food to where it is needed from where it is produced requires trucks and trains. Trucks and trains are never going to run on solar energy, therefore more greenhouse gases, plus more construction of roads, railroads, warehouses, and retail distribution centers.

The only real solution I can think of is to relocate people from desolate, isolated areas to either cities or lush agricultural areas.

[dkf]

8. It also requires cooperative governments

which we don't always have.

[GliderGuider]

9. Saying "hunger is a political problem" implies we can solve it.

The historical record says otherwise. Humanity on a planetary scale has never "solved" the hunger problem. The best we've been able to do with extra food is to grow more people. The simple facts of distance and commoditization (the fact that we have monetized every aspect of human existence including food) make "frictional hunger" as inevitable and insoluble as frictional unemployment.

We're just apes with big brains, we're not the masters of the universe. Just because we can recognize a problem doesn't mean we can solve it.

[Odin2005]

13. That is a reactionary argument.

It is akin to Aristotle saying that slavery is part of the natural order of things and it is impossible to get rid of it, but got rid of it we did.

[GliderGuider]

14. Slavery and hunger are two very different kinds of problems.

Slavery is soluble by legislation. Hunger is not.

[4th law of robotics]

15. We've eliminated slavery in some parts of the world

not in others. And of course it can come back any time.

Seems a lot like hunger then.

[Gregorian]

10. Except that to grow the food for that many we need to kill the planet doing so.

Look up the Bosch-Haber cycle. It's using a huge amount of our energy, and polluting the waters of the world.

Also, "food". Cardboard carrots aren't food. Real food stopped being grown in the 70's.

[felix_numinous]

11. Just like money, housing

and medicine, there is enough to go around, but it is not being made available.

[The Stranger]

17. money, housing, medicine, pollution credits, fresh air, fresh water, property, land, cell phone,

clothing, a car, internet access, wastewater, plumbing, trash pickup and disposal -- actually, there isn't enough to go around.

Time to face facts.

[Odin2005]

12. The insanity of Capitalism.

It is more profitable to grow luxury crops for export than to grow food for locals. Essentially people in the developing world starve because people in the developed world can outbid them.

[The Stranger]

16. Food isn't enough -- each of those 10 billion people is going to want transportation, a job, a cell

phone, internet access, computer, retirement package, land, decent home (shelter isn't going to be enough), gasoline, plumbing, and so on and so on and so on.

Say it with me. The problem is OVERPOPULATION.