Does this practice seem to be against all kinds of laws of nature to anyone else? I know the USA started doing it in the early thirties after the crash and b4 the war to push prices back up so farmers could support themselves again (in England we just pay farmers to do nothing, which is almost as bad). I don't see why they (the government) can't just get the farmers to develop their food on-site. Instead of grain and tomato and onion farms move them all together and also include some cows for cheese then turn it all into a pizza factory.
The are all famredd seperatly because it is easier to farms one instead of many crops farms use to do everything back befor the industrial revolution, when transporting and storing the food was a problem
lol wtf are you talking about? you havent elaborated or explained.... can you please post more info? thanksie....
missed it I will restate it in a more longwinded fashion Along time ago in a not so far away, people found that it was easer to farm and settle down and make a home then gathering. Thus transforming us from a nomadic society to an agricultural one. The farmers would grown all the wanted to eat, potatoes, tomatoes Onions ect. And this fashion of farming continued on for many, many generations. But humans have the tendency to dream and invent new things so everything did not stay in the way it once was. The dreaming continued, and continues to this day. But lets cross that bridge when we get there. Well the amount of this dreaming led way to events in our history. To take a Good one, The Industrial revolution. With this ‘Revolution’ came astounding advancements in transportation methods and storage methods. With these new methods in transportation it was far easier and faster to transport and store food for shipping to the market. So with this in mind some farmers decided to drop their own subsistence farms and concentrate on farming one crop. So they could farm that one crop in greater amounts and with greater efficiency. And finding that this worked and was far more profitable that is why we don’t see farms that make everything they need to make a pizza or other awesome foods And well the reason the government cant just force the farmers to consolidate is because they are all privately owned lands and people can grow what the want (as long as its legal J ) I feel my other post though filled with errors covered this in a more timely matter. But I was glad to write out a synopsis of farming from the start to the Industrial revolution. Sometimes some people just need a little more info to catch on.
Yeah, but they burn crops, or used to, and pay farmers to keep their land bare and stuff. Why, if food is not commercially viable by itself, do the taxpayers not pay the farmers wages and then food could be free for everyone. Maybe not all food but certain types, and enough to live on. But pay them to work, not to do nothing like they do now.
they pay farmers not to grow food here in the US to. maybe they should be paying the farmer to grow food then they could send that to africa or some thing huumm...just a thought
The farmers grow extra food then they ship it south (to mexico). There it sells for so cheap that it costs less to buy food than to grow it. So all the poor mexican farmers have no work and no money, so they riot. The government doesn't want to deal with the rioters, so they tell them to go to the U.S. to look for jobs (which was already an idea anyway). So they come walk across the border.
It is a fucked up system! I'm not sure about this (someone correct me if I'm wrong) but I think Africa produces enough food to feed itself, it's just they are forced to sell a lot of it to pay off debts. The only reason I think this is because everyone's talking about tarriffs on African exports (with the G8), and how they could be competetive on a global scale if we (the west) stopped the tarrifs. Also, people in Europe who don't like the Common Agricultural Policy (the European law that says we have to subsidise farmers) say we should buy food from Africa instead because it would be cheaper. It seems a bit perverse that we can buy food from a continent where there are starving people, cheaper than we can make it ourselves in a place where there is so much wealth but such is the nature of things.
Your partly right. The continent of Africa does produce about enough food to feed itself. But the market system in Africa is desperately lacking the infrastructure to acheive agricultural independance. They have enough food, but they don't really have enough trucks to transport the food, they don't have the market infrastructure to distribute the food very well, they don't have much in the way of refridgeration, and often they won't even have many roads to connect smaller cities. So while one village may have more then enough food, another 40 miles away maybe be starving and they simply don't have the infrastructure to trade food. Sometimes this extra food will be traded across the continent, or to Europe, or Asia, but even more often the excess food will just rot in the village. Debt relief is an important part of this. Without so many debts, the nations of africa could be able to build more infrastructure. It gets more complicated then that though. Much aid money has been given and many loans have been offered, but in a lot of cases they've been used to fund government palaces, used by warlords to tunnel drug and embezzlel diamond trade, and fund armies, which in some cases have been used to commit genocide aginst the native people. Somalia, Congo, Rawanda, Sudan, are some examples of this in the past decade who've used aid money to buy weapons to murder their population. We probably could have stopped it too. Have no doubt about it, our real crimes aginst Africa are crimes of inaction. But we can ameliorate. The most important thing we can do for Africa is end export subsidies on African agriculture. This will allow African products to compete in the world market, and allow it to build an infrastructure for trade, combined with aid not only for food but also to allow it to construct nessecary infrastructure, Africa will be free of hunger in 30 years. This G8 confrence was a good start, and theres another confrence planned in 2005, and then trade issues will be more on the front row. Theres still much more that can be done. I'm glad you're so intrested. If you'd like to do it, there are a lot of good charities that you can give to help impoverished people all around the world. I like mercycorps, they're very reputable and work very hard to provide aid. You can provide aid to the sitauation in Darfur, or to Africa where mercy corps will work to provide food, rebuild schools, etc. https://ssl.charityweb.net/mercycorps/giftbasket/donation.htm?Custom15=wm
Why's no one campaigning for free food? Someone should be. I'm not too interested in giving money to Africa. I know money is worth more in Africa and, while I'm buying £5 worth of weed I could be saving someone's eyesight, or life even, but I refuse to take responsibility for that. I'm skint enough and there're plenty of peolpe who are ridiculously rich who don't help - why should I? At least, in that way. I'm trying to bring the monetary system down. Stop money being used at all. Then all those rich fucks will be left with a load of money and loads of money management skills and no one will want thier stinking money because they'll have everything they want. Trust me, it'll work. It's been said before and I'll say it again. You can't eat gold. Money is extremely unhealthy for the world and I refuse to lend it credence by sending pitiful amounts of it half way across the world, pretending that, in so doing, I'm pulling my weight and doing my bit for the people of Africa. We're going in the wrong direction by trying to raise money and give it away.
I'm sorry you feel that way. But food being free in Africa wouldn't help poverty, it would augment it, considering Africa's economy is largely agricultural. This isn't about responsibility, its about helping people. You should help because they need all the help they can get.
If food were free, surely that means everyone could eat. Food simply isn't a commercially viable crop, at least not in the west, and I think that should be sorted out. I'm not saying it should be removed from the economy, I'm saying money should be removed from the economy because it's money's fault there are poor people in the world. I just think giving food away for free would be a start to freeing people up. How can a drug company (who go thru $300 billion / year in R&D) refuse to give life-saving drugs to dying people for the sake of a couple of measly dollars. No human being would be able to get away with that if it wasn't for the justification of money. Knowing the ins and outs of money isn't necessary. You only need to know that money was invented to make sure people put in as much as they take out. How can you put in less if you're well fed? Look, I don't know Africa. I've never been there and probably never will. But I know that money is corrupt, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. You get more the more you have! Can you imagine that happening with goods exchanges? eg You're fat and you've got a great big pile of food so here! Have some more. I'll take it off this guy who has bugger all food and is malnurished.
