Food problem: Almost 50% of what we produce, we trow away.

[Diglytron]

Intro

As much as half of all the food produced in the world – equivalent to 2bn tonnes – ends up as waste every year, engineers warned in a report published on Thursday.
The UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) blames the "staggering" new figures in its analysis on unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and Western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with "poor engineering and agricultural practices", inadequate infrastructure and poor storage facilities.
In the face of United Nations predictions that there could be about an extra 3 billion people to feed by the end of the century and growing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy, the IME is calling for urgent action to tackle this waste.
Their report, Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not, found that between 30% and 50% or 1.2-2bn tonnes of food produced around the world never makes it on to a plate.
In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers' exacting standards on physical appearance, it says, while up to half of the food that is bought in Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers.

sources;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...rld-food-waste

http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/3000588/...-verspild.html


The report;

http://www.imeche.org/knowledge/them...nt/global-food

Report

Intresting too is the water use to produce all this food.

Water Usage

Over the past century, fresh water abstraction for human use has increased at more than double the rate of population growth. Currently about 3.8 trillion m3 of water is used by humans per annum. About 70% of this is consumed by the global agriculture sector, and the level of use will continue to rise over the coming decades. Indeed, depending on how food is produced and the validity of forecasts for demographic trends, the demand for water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion m3 annually by mid-century. This is 2.5 to 3.5 times greater than the total human use of fresh water today.

What you think TWC? What is the problem of us, the Western society that we trow away so much, and how is this possible to change.

For admins; not sure if this was the right place cause it could also be placed in Ethos and Morale etc. I think thats even better, cause thats the discussion I have in mind.

[The Glorious Moldovan]

How is this possible to change?
Education.
Educate the population to be rational beings.
If people would know and acknowledge how food such as KFC is produced,for example they wouldnt consume so much fast food.
That applies to all sorts of food too.Im not saying they shouldnt consume,they should consume in moderation.

[I WUB PUGS]

Fresh foods are bred to be appealing to the eye. They don't even taste as good as the fuggly ones. I recall listening to NPR not too long ago where a man was trying to bring back the old tomatoes. They apparently taste better, but can look really ugly. Supermarkets stock foods that catch the eye. Its all marketing.

Also the water and the food shortage doesn't matter. The majority of the world isn't experiencing these shortages. What I do in California has no impact on starving Africans. Do I have an excess of water and food here? Sure do, but the transportation of my water and food to Africa defies all logic.

The food and water problems are entirely local.

This is a shame on the surface, but we have evolved this market. The only solution would be to force people to buy whatever is on the shelves and make farmers grow less. You'd still be paying the same amount for what you get, but there is no guarantee you would get what you want. Excess offers a person to have choice. I don't need to settle for 3 of the 5 tomatoes on the shelf, instead I can sort through and get the 3 out of 300 I want.

Arguing against choice and mandating lower production through the use of regulation is nothing short of state control................ie communism.

[Lazarus]

Also the water and the food shortage doesn't matter. The majority of the world isn't experiencing these shortages. What I do in California has no impact on starving Africans. Do I have an excess of water and food here? Sure do, but the transportation of my water and food to Africa defies all logic.

Why has the thread continued beyond this point?

[basics]

From what I have seen on TV what wastage there is points quite clearly to overproduction of certain items and underproduction of others. For people who have no food that is no comfort. However peoples with access to all kinds of food will always eat what their pallets desire and there lies why the market is as it is.

What makes my blood boil is not the figures that have been presented to us, disgusting as they are, it is the amounts of money spent on useless adventures like the Collider which if turned into pipelines across certain parts of Africa would have provided water so that farming could produce what they need. I mean we are talking of trillions here.

Water and sun produces wheat and wheat produces bread and bread fills empty stomachs. That is what the starving need, not bloody Colliders that produce nothing but empty promises. Most of the overkill that we are seeing in wastage is what keeps many nations afloat and if they weren't producing it then the problems would be much greater.

Their farmers don't have the capacity nor the money to change what they have been subsisting on over centuries because most European farms are small to medium. Where capcity is is already being wrought out in places like Russia and America and they are suffering drought and other weather hazzards, is very dependent on good weather.

The wastage therefore comes by overbuying on the part of both supplier and customer and it therefore cannot alleviate starvation in other parts of the world. How do you stop a wifie buying what she will not fully use? What supermarket buyer is going to see his shelves empty because he took a do gooder stand. It's just not going to happen.

To them that say education is the answer, I say what bollocks. It's all about money. Business must make it to survive. That is why its shelves are full of stuff that attracts the consumer. What he or she buys will always produce waste which in itself perpetuates next year's harvests. If education was the answer then why do the educated turn away from feeding our populations to spend trillions on things that are no way near feeding anyone?

[Col. Tartleton]

What makes my blood boil is not the figures that have been presented to us, disgusting as they are, it is the amounts of money spent on useless adventures like the Collider which if turned into pipelines across certain parts of Africa would have provided water so that farming could produce what they need. I mean we are talking of trillions here.

Yeah, but that's what people want to spend their money on.

Water and sun produces wheat and wheat produces bread and bread fills empty stomachs. That is what the starving need, not bloody Colliders that produce nothing but empty promises. Most of the overkill that we are seeing in wastage is what keeps many nations afloat and if they weren't producing it then the problems would be much greater.

It's not empty promises, they discovered where mass comes from. Theoretical physics became physics.

The poors can build their own irrigation systems. I have confidence in them as people. Prehistoric man had advanced irrigation systems. Why can't modern people? They can.

Their farmers don't have the capacity nor the money to change what they have been subsisting on over centuries because most European farms are small to medium. Where capcity is is already being wrought out in places like Russia and America and they are suffering drought and other weather hazzards, is very dependent on good weather.

But that's the nature of farming. It has and always will be dependent on the weather.

The wastage therefore comes by overbuying on the part of both supplier and customer and it therefore cannot alleviate starvation in other parts of the world. How do you stop a wifie buying what she will not fully use? What supermarket buyer is going to see his shelves empty because he took a do gooder stand. It's just not going to happen.

It's not even necessary. As long as supply over paces demand and there is a glut you need to destroy crops to maintain the profitability that allows for the livelihood of the farmers and farming ability next year.

To them that say education is the answer, I say what bollocks. It's all about money. Business must make it to survive. That is why its shelves are full of stuff that attracts the consumer. What he or she buys will always produce waste which in itself perpetuates next year's harvests. If education was the answer then why do the educated turn away from feeding our populations to spend trillions on things that are no way near feeding anyone?

Why should we feed those who can feed themselves? If it wasn't for the technology our people invented they would live and die without anyone from around here knowing about them.

This basically sounds like another white man's burden situation. Africa is Africa's fault. India is India's fault. Latin America is Latin America's fault. Indochina is Indochina's fault. Indonesia is Indonesia's fault.

[Ak1980]

The poors can build their own irrigation systems. I have confidence in them as people. Prehistoric man had advanced irrigation systems. Why can't modern people? They can.

most of the time, in developing world, the poor especially in remote area is poor because they don't know better and don't have resource to do it. It's one thing to build simple irrigation, it's another thing to build complicated irrigation with road network and support by electricity. There's good reason why prehistoric man can only support low number of people and most of them is in malnutrition/subsistence farming condition compare to nowday.

This basically sounds like another white man's burden situation. Africa is Africa's fault. India is India's fault. Latin America is Latin America's fault. Indochina is Indochina's fault. Indonesia is Indonesia's fault.

No one call for white man to take responsibility, most of the world already move past it. We just need several generation more to undo the damage that white man did to asia/africa country

[GrnEyedDvl]

What makes my blood boil is not the figures that have been presented to us, disgusting as they are, it is the amounts of money spent on useless adventures like the Collider which if turned into pipelines across certain parts of Africa would have provided water so that farming could produce what they need. I mean we are talking of trillions here.

If this had been built in a country or funded by countries with mass starvation you might have a point. But it wasnt. It was built by countries that do not have this problem.

If you are saying these countries should have spent the money in countries with mass starvation then I would ask one simple question.

Why?

Why does any one country (or person) owe any other country (or person) anything?

To them that say education is the answer, I say what bollocks. It's all about money. Business must make it to survive. That is why its shelves are full of stuff that attracts the consumer. What he or she buys will always produce waste which in itself perpetuates next year's harvests. If education was the answer then why do the educated turn away from feeding our populations to spend trillions on things that are no way near feeding anyone?

Money is definitely the answer, but dont confuse "educated" with "able to run a business and turn a profit". There are crap loads of "educated" politicians and scientists that would be starving to death if they didnt have an income from tax dollars taken from everyone else because they simply could not make it in the "real world". They have no idea how economies work, and this includes many economists who only report what they think the results of a particular policy are as opposed to knowing why a particular policy works.

Money is definitely the answer, but not money by itself, the generation of money via business. Transferring wealth around is no substitute for creating wealth through trade. If there were more jobs in these places with starving people, then there would be more money to spend on fishing boats and farm equipment, and the only real way to provide a job is to start a business that turns a profit.

[basics]

" Why does any one country (or person) owe any other country (or person) anything?"

GrnEyedDvl,

Because my friend, people are dying needlessly when there is an abundance elsewhere. An abundance of brain and money that could put a stop to these deaths. We talk a lot of education on these threads but how do you educate people who have but days to live Aye, even from birth? Give them the tools and the education in how to use them and see a difference but no that seems something left to charities out of which a trickle gets through, that is after these charities pay vast wages to its upper echelons and invests the rest on the stock market.

I say our first priority is to see people fed and watered, no matter where they bide, or who they are. We have the nerve to call ourselves human beings and as such what sort of fellow is it that says stuff them, we owe them nothing? Whether we like it or not we are our brothers keepers because of our humanity. It's not a case of what can we get out of it, rather a case of giving something back to the other humans on this planet who have nothing. For all the trillions spent on science, science is not helping them right now when it could. That is my point.

[s.rwitt]

meh, better than the alternative problem.

[I WUB PUGS]

This:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Or this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[nemgod]

Top one for making pasta sauce

Bottom one for salad.

[mrmouth]

It goes well beyond simply throwing things out. It's about landfills, the energy and pesticides used to get you your exotic fruit year round, genetically modified foods and another powerful lobby wanting to prevent simply putting that on labels, factory farming that is killing the soil, etc, etc.

Just like the water issue - this isnt a technical problem. It's an efficiency issue with a significant moral component that stems from people wanting to make as much money as they can. They offer that up, and we bite, not thinking about the consequences. It isnt making anything more sustainable or safe to eat.

Im all for people putting on the big boy pants and sourcing locally grown foods that are sustainable. And eating seasonally.

And , buy what you are going to eat. There is also a huge $$$ component to this. Think of it as throwing out money and petrol.

[I WUB PUGS]

It goes well beyond simply throwing things out. It's about landfills, the energy and pesticides used to get you your exotic fruit year round, genetically modified foods and another powerful lobby wanting to prevent simply putting that on labels, factory farming that is killing the soil, etc, etc.

Just like the water issue - this isnt a technical problem. It's an efficiency issue with a significant moral component that stems from people wanting to make as much money as they can. They offer that up, and we bite, not thinking about the consequences. It isnt making anything more sustainable or safe to eat.

Im all for people putting on the big boy pants and sourcing locally grown foods that are sustainable. And eating seasonally.

And , buy what you are going to eat. There is also a huge $$$ component to this. Think of it as throwing out money and petrol.

In California all you need is a 10x10 plot and some water and you can grow all year round!

I don't mind selling you avocados at 4 dollars a piece when you're snowed in.

Or cherries, apples, oranges, lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, the list goes on and on!

Really though, wtf do you buy produce from abroad? Even California is absurd for most parts of this country. That's why we have huge canning facilities just around the corner from where I live. That's all fine and well, but people want "fresh" and take a look at where a lot of your food is coming from.

Why am I importing fruits from Brazil? Garlic from China? Because it saves me like a nickel per head of garlic? Stupid.

[GrnEyedDvl]

This is simple, instead of food stamps we send out garbage cans and solve two problems at once.

I love how its a "problem" if I choose to spend my money on something and then throw it away. Another made up "problem" that some agency somewhere can come along with a solution for that actually ends up causing more problems.

The starvation in the world is not caused by not being able to produce enough food, and never will be. Its because the economies in these places that have lots of starving people sucks. And their economies suck for lots of reasons, but a large portion of it can be laid at the feet of government policy. Give people freedom, let them make their own choices, get out of the way of business, and these countries will be able to support themselves.

[Diglytron]

This is simple, instead of food stamps we send out garbage cans and solve two problems at once.

I love how its a "problem" if I choose to spend my money on something and then throw it away. Another made up "problem" that some agency somewhere can come along with a solution for that actually ends up causing more problems.

The starvation in the world is not caused by not being able to produce enough food, and never will be. Its because the economies in these places that have lots of starving people sucks. And their economies suck for lots of reasons, but a large portion of it can be laid at the feet of government policy. Give people freedom, let them make their own choices, get out of the way of business, and these countries will be able to support themselves.

I think this is to optimistic thought. It is a problem, the problem is we, as Western we start to see products as products, and we forget what they meant. The production costs, the costs to transport it and the space it costs to produce it all we don't realise when buying stuff in the market.

Though, like the OP stated, its not only about the food we are buying and trow away. It is also about the food (50% in England) which never arrives at the supermarket cause it doesn't look good. Well, this is a terrible excuse of course since it can be used for a lot of poor people in England self which don't care about the looks.

I love how its a "problem" if I choose to spend my money on something and then throw it away. Another made up "problem" that some agency somewhere can come along with a solution for that actually ends up causing more problems.

Well I'm not sure how this is meant, but there is definitely a problem. And thats our economic system, which I don't want to discuss here, but the problem is that we always want to produce more and more. Just because of making profit.

The starvation in the world is not caused by not being able to produce enough food, and never will be. Its because the economies in these places that have lots of starving people sucks. And their economies suck for lots of reasons, but a large portion of it can be laid at the feet of government policy. Give people freedom, let them make their own choices, get out of the way of business, and these countries will be able to support themselves.

Agreed with the highlighted part. Tough the rest is not true. Its not because Africa's enonomics sucks that they don't produce enough food, its not because, for example, Malta, don't produce enough food cause their economics suck, its because the land they own is not suitable for producing food for this large numbers of humans.

Give people freedom, let them make their own choices, get out of the way of business, and these countries will be able to support themselves.

I normally don't want to act like a Communist, since I am disgusted by them, but here I have to agree with them. Giving freedom to companies and businesses will result in the situation which is in many African countries right now. Asian companies producing food for Asian countries on African ground. The local people work for a slave loan on the plantations to produce food for the Asians while they don't have enough to feed their families themselves.

Anyway, I will update the OP tomorrow after I had a night sleep. I will write some personal input in it too then.

[Ak1980]

I normally don't want to act like a Communist, since I am disgusted by them, but here I have to agree with them. Giving freedom to companies and businesses will result in the situation which is in many African countries right now. Asian companies producing food for Asian countries on African ground. The local people work for a slave loan on the plantations to produce food for the Asians while they don't have enough to feed their families themselves.

Do you have something against Asian?

You do realize that there's plantation in Asia and Africa who also produced food for West? The reverse is also happen, the west producing food for Asian and Africa country, Asia also producing food for West and African country.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I think your sarcasm detector is broken today Digly.

Though, like the OP stated, its not only about the food we are buying and trow away. It is also about the food (50% in England) which never arrives at the supermarket cause it doesn't look good. Well, this is a terrible excuse of course since it can be used for a lot of poor people in England self which don't care about the looks.

I will disagree with you on that. Completely disagree with you. And not because I have any experience with poor people in England, but because people are people and I know how they act here in the US. Here they use their foodstamp debit cards to buy all kinds of stuff (including getting cash at strip clubs but thats another story) and now you can even use them to buy fast food which is probably one of the biggests wastes in the entire program.

If poor people didnt care what the food looked like, then they would use these programs to buy it. The fact is that they do NOT buy food they dont like the look of, so the store ends up throwing it away off the shelf. Your OP even partially stated this with the words "unnecessarily strict sell-by dates". If it isnt sold by X date they take it off the shelf and throw it away.

When talking about these issues, we need to face facts. And some facts are unavoidable. I am going to buy what I want to buy, and am not going to buy what I do not want to buy. This is why the farmers dont even bother to harvest it if it doesnt look good. They already have money invested in it to grow it, and spending more money to harvest it when they cannot sell it is a complete waste of time and money. Its cheaper to let the crop go than it is to harvest it, and because you know that annually a certain percentage of the crop is going to turn out this way you make sure you plant enough to cover it. The may get combined in and used as prefertilizer for next year or even chopped up for pig food, but doing a real harvest and production run on them is a waste.

This thing you quote is complaining about that process of not harvesting stuff because there is no profit in it, and there is nothing that is going to stop that. If you try to force them to harvest it so it can be used for these starving countries, they will pass along the cost and you will see an increase in the price of food which will have a direct negative impact on our economy, and its not my job as a US taxpayer to subsidize starving people on the other side of the planet anyways. Especially countries that are generally hostile towards the US to begin with.

Giving freedom to companies and businesses will result in the situation which is in many African countries right now. Asian companies producing food for Asian countries on African ground. The local people work for a slave loan on the plantations to produce food for the Asians while they don't have enough to feed their families themselves.

So now you are saying that its not just the unemployed people in Africa that are starving, its the employed people that are starving as well. Somehow I doubt that. With an unemployment rate of 60-70% in large areas of Africa its definitely a problem, but 70% of the population is not starving.

As always, I want to see numbers not just platiudes so I went and found some. Since you claim that Africans are being exploited by Asian food producers I will use African numbers.

The population of the continent of Africa is just over a billion.

The WorldHunger.org website shows Africa with about 250 million people suffering from malnutrition. That would be 25% of the 1 billion population.

The world unemployment map shows the continent of Africa all over the place. Some areas have no data collection at all, some areas in the north are at 10%, one in the south is at 90%. Its pretty hard to get an average out of that, but one thing I can promise you is that the malnutrition rate will be higher in the places with higher unemployment.

I dont buy your assertion that people working in Africa to produce food for Asia are starving. Those are the ones that arent starving, precisely because they actually have jobs. Undoubtedly some of those jobs could be better and some of those companies could treat people better. But also undoubtedly in a country with 50% unemployment its better to have any job than to have no job.

Which brings us back to my point. Get out of the way of business. If more businesses opened there, whether they are African or Asian or Martian, things will be better than they are today. And it doesnt really matter what kind of business it is. Anything that turns a profit is good as long as we arent talking extremes like slavery or nuclear materials. Normal businesses.

But every time someone like me says to get out of the way of business, someone on the other side of the fence says "quit exporting jobs", and someone on the other side of the fence says "you are just exploiting those people by paying them $5 a day", and someone on another side of the fence says "you cant run that business, too much carbon", and someone on another side of the fence says "higher corporate taxes", and someone on another side of the fence says..... and it goes on forever.

[Diglytron]

I think your sarcasm detector is broken today Digly.

Yeah. I think it was that day. Had a really bad day. Sorry for that

I will disagree with you on that. Completely disagree with you. And not because I have any experience with poor people in England, but because people are people and I know how they act here in the US. Here they use their foodstamp debit cards to buy all kinds of stuff (including getting cash at strip clubs but thats another story) and now you can even use them to buy fast food which is probably one of the biggests wastes in the entire program.

Good, here we can start the discussion I hoped to start! I think I agree with you on the point of foodstamps in the form of debit cards. That won't work of course, its the same as giving money to a tramp. You never know for what they are going to use it. Sure, there are people who will spend it on strip clubs, fast food or drugs. And, yes, there are people who are using as its supposed to be.
I think therefore that the food stamp doesn't work. Though, it had not much to do topic which was the high trowing away rate of good food in the west.

You say you disagree with me on the fact that people don't want to eat not good looking food. Of course, most people would go for the 'good-looking' food. Thats obvious. My point however is that the food which does look bad, but is perfect to eat, is good for people who don't have this choice. And believe me those people not only live in Africa.

In Holland the ask for cheap food rise explosively the last decades. Many people could not effort the high prices or every day fresh fruit and vegetables. Because of this we started so-called food banks where companies sell the food which doesn't look good enough for the normal market for very low prices. Because its all on voluntary base its very cheap for the people who first could not effort buying the good looking food. This is a good solution I think.

Edit; after some fast research I found out you also have these kind of projects in the USA

here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_ba...nancial_crisis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_America

http://www.foodbanknyc.org/

you have to enlighten me tough, are those banks working the same as I described or are they selling the good looking stuff?

If poor people didnt care what the food looked like, then they would use these programs to buy it. The fact is that they do NOT buy food they dont like the look of, so the store ends up throwing it away off the shelf. Your OP even partially stated this with the words "unnecessarily strict sell-by dates". If it isnt sold by X date they take it off the shelf and throw it away.

I am not sure where you heard they don't use the programs, but in Europe the amount of users grow with almost 60% at some places. On the sell-by dates, yes, this is a fault of the companies and the big misunderstanding which is created and never been clarified by both government and food producing and selling companies.

When talking about these issues, we need to face facts. And some facts are unavoidable. I am going to buy what I want to buy, and am not going to buy what I do not want to buy. This is why the farmers dont even bother to harvest it if it doesnt look good. They already have money invested in it to grow it, and spending more money to harvest it when they cannot sell it is a complete waste of time and money. Its cheaper to let the crop go than it is to harvest it, and because you know that annually a certain percentage of the crop is going to turn out this way you make sure you plant enough to cover it. The may get combined in and used as prefertilizer for next year or even chopped up for pig food, but doing a real harvest and production run on them is a waste.

I don't see how 'I'm going to buy what I want to buy' is a fact. I think there is definitely a market for less good looking food. I'm sure people are willing to eat less good looking food, which is still good, if they have to pay less. No fact though, sadly enough.

This thing you quote is complaining about that process of not harvesting stuff because there is no profit in it, and there is nothing that is going to stop that. If you try to force them to harvest it so it can be used for these starving countries, they will pass along the cost and you will see an increase in the price of food which will have a direct negative impact on our economy, and its not my job as a US taxpayer to subsidize starving people on the other side of the planet anyways. Especially countries that are generally hostile towards the US to begin with.

Well, I practically was shocked after reading the highlighted part. Its not your job as taxpayer, its your job as human being. Yes, Africa is over populated, yes, their is a lot of unemployment over there and yes, its part their own fault, though I would hope that there are people on the world willing to help me if I was in that situation. Maybe its because how my parents raised me and that there is a difference between Americans and Europeans but I hope you feel the same about this one day.

So now you are saying that its not just the unemployed people in Africa that are starving, its the employed people that are starving as well. Somehow I doubt that. With an unemployment rate of 60-70% in large areas of Africa its definitely a problem, but 70% of the population is not starving.

Well, you did misunderstand me here. I'm not saying the employed people are starving too. I'm not sure, you mean Africa?

As always, I want to see numbers not just platiudes so I went and found some. Since you claim that Africans are being exploited by Asian food producers I will use African numbers.

The population of the continent of Africa is just over a billion.

The WorldHunger.org website shows Africa with about 250 million people suffering from malnutrition. That would be 25% of the 1 billion population.

The world unemployment map shows the continent of Africa all over the place. Some areas have no data collection at all, some areas in the north are at 10%, one in the south is at 90%. Its pretty hard to get an average out of that, but one thing I can promise you is that the malnutrition rate will be higher in the places with higher unemployment.

Yes, good, you gave random numbers of the African continent. Numbers which are obvious. Yes, the population is over a billion. Yes, 250 million of them suffering from malnutrition, this forms logically 25% of the continent.

You gave numbers which has nothing to do with the topic of Asian countries (read China) who are producing food in Africa, resulting in the removal of food from Africa to China which leads again to the situation that people in Africa are starving. They have a job, yes, thats right. They have a job like the Palestinians who build the settlements on the West-bank. They have a job, with a loan, and help their own people into the ruins.

Now the facts on the topic of China producing food in Africa. And the numbers

Some of the world's richest countries are buying or leasing land in some of the world's poorest to satisfy insatiable appetites for food and fuel. In the new scramble for Africa, nearly 2.5m hectares (6.2m acres) of farmland in just five sub-Saharan countries

Indian farming companies, backed by government loans, have bought hundreds of thousands of hectares in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils to feed their domestic market.

the UK-based Lonrho corporation leased 25,000 hectares for rice in Angola; China secured 2.8m hectares for a biofuel oil palm plantation in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Qatar leased 20,000 hectares for fruit and vegetable cultivation in exchange for funding a $2.3bn port in Kenya.

Good. This are the facts.

I dont buy your assertion that people working in Africa to produce food for Asia are starving. Those are the ones that arent starving, precisely because they actually have jobs. Undoubtedly some of those jobs could be better and some of those companies could treat people better. But also undoubtedly in a country with 50% unemployment its better to have any job than to have no job.

Really? Read this:

Official report: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/ak241e/ak241e.pdf

Intresting story from the Guardian about this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/03/africa-land-grab

: http://www.grain.org/article/entries...s-a-water-grab

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...rica-land-grab

Which brings us back to my point. Get out of the way of business. If more businesses opened there, whether they are African or Asian or Martian, things will be better than they are today. And it doesnt really matter what kind of business it is. Anything that turns a profit is good as long as we arent talking extremes like slavery or nuclear materials. Normal businesses.

But every time someone like me says to get out of the way of business, someone on the other side of the fence says "quit exporting jobs", and someone on the other side of the fence says "you are just exploiting those people by paying them $5 a day", and someone on another side of the fence says "you cant run that business, too much carbon", and someone on another side of the fence says "higher corporate taxes", and someone on another side of the fence says..... and it goes on forever.

How much I grow up with the idea of 'getting out the way of the business' and the fierce opinion there is in my suroundings about this, I am sure this is not a solution but it would even make it worse. Thing is, companies are based on making profit and producing more and more every time.

And it doesnt really matter what kind of business it is. Anything that turns a profit is good as long as we arent talking extremes like slavery or nuclear materials. Normal businesses.

Completely false. Anything that turns profit is good? Well, say that to Shell who is ruining the Artic, say that to BP who ruined the gulf of Mexico say that to the companies who produce cellphones under absurt conditions for both personal and climate.

Well, I'm really, really looking forward to your reply. Cost me almost 2 hours to make this post and I'm actually quite proud of it! !

[GrnEyedDvl]

And a lot of that government policy isn't local but the agricultural protectionism of the EU and USA. I mean why does it still exist? Who does it help? It allows more people to be farmers at the cost of the state. Who does it hurt? Native taxpayers and every developing country in the world.

I think you are confused. There is no real protectionism in place for agriculture. In fact we pay people to NOT grow food on the farmland they own. There are some good reasons behind that, and some not so good reasons for it, but it doesnt really matter to this conversation. In a market like Africa the amount of food grown or not grown in the US doesnt have any real impact on what happens there because there is so little foreign trade anyways. Its not like steel in Japan where there are active trade wars going on between two developed countries. Some guy in Africa could go out and farm a couple of hundred acres and I doubt he would be affected by wheat prices in the US at all.

Given the way Europe raped and exploited Africa endlessly throughout the past thousand years, I'd say we do owe them something. Oh wait Africa isn't a country

If slavery had never happened there would still be hundreds of millions of people starving in Africa. You cannot lay the blame for every bad thing happening there at the feet of policy decisions 200 years ago. There are countries in Africa that are doing just fine, yet 200 years ago were subject to the kind of exploitation you are talking about. They have found a way to make things work. Other countries have not. We need to look at the differences between those two kinds of countries and be honest about solutions, not just shrug it off to stuff that has happened in the past and then demand people pay up. All that does is create dependence.

Edit; after some fast research I found out you also have these kind of projects in the USA

This is a bandaid, not a real solution. Of course there are charities and organizations all over the place that do stuff like this. But it doesnt solve the real problem of economics that cause the starvation and hunger. It only addresses the problem after it exists.

I don't see how 'I'm going to buy what I want to buy' is a fact. I think there is definitely a market for less good looking food. I'm sure people are willing to eat less good looking food, which is still good, if they have to pay less. No fact though, sadly enough.

There would be a market for those kinds of foods, if people were spending their own money. As long as people are spending someone else's money and are not accountable for how it is spent, this is what we are going to get.

Well, I practically was shocked after reading the highlighted part. Its not your job as taxpayer, its your job as human being.

No its not. Its not an obligation that I provide something for someone else. My job is to do the best I can to take care of myself and my family. Yours is to do the same for yours.

But while that is the way I feel, I do NOT have a problem with helping people. And never have I said that I do. What I have a problem with is being forced to help people when we do not have any sensible form of oversight or expectations of responsibility from the person being helped.

There is a huge difference between helping someone out for a bit who then turns into a productive member of society (or a country that turns into a productive member of the world community) and supporting someone for 50 years while not expecting them to take steps to become self sufficient.

How long should we (US and EU) be expected to keep pouring billions of dollars in "aid" into Africa or wherever? Until the end of time as we know it? At some point they have to sink or swim on their own just like everyone else in the world.

Yes, Africa is over populated, yes, their is a lot of unemployment over there and yes, its part their own fault, though I would hope that there are people on the world willing to help me if I was in that situation. Maybe its because how my parents raised me and that there is a difference between Americans and Europeans but I hope you feel the same about this one day.

See above.

You gave numbers which has nothing to do with the topic of Asian countries (read China) who are producing food in Africa, resulting in the removal of food from Africa to China which leads again to the situation that people in Africa are starving.

If that food stayed in Africa, people would not have the money to buy it. So then what? They either steal it (I would too btw if I had to) or the government takes it and distributes it somehow, but then its gone. And because it wasnt paid for there is no capital there to plant and harvest the next crop.

They have a job, yes, thats right. They have a job like the Palestinians who build the settlements on the West-bank.

They shouldnt be there anyways. They made war, they lost. They made war again, they lost again. They made war a third time and lost a third time and this time had their land conquered, sorry about that. Dont with people over religion if you dont want this to happen. This is another topic entirely but one I am happy to discuss in another thread.

They have a job, with a loan, and help their own people into the ruins.

There is definitely a lot of that. So here is the scenario as you see it?

1. Bad people do bad things to the people in their own country.
2. You and I owe it to the people that got screwed to support them, but when we tell them how to fix it they tell us not to interfere with their culture?




Fine, I wont interfere with your culture anymore. Starve.

How much I grow up with the idea of 'getting out the way of the business' and the fierce opinion there is in my suroundings about this, I am sure this is not a solution but it would even make it worse. Thing is, companies are based on making profit and producing more and more every time.

Of course they are. This is the reason for forming a company. Whether its a small company or a huge one doesnt matter. Without trade, there is no economy. No jobs, which means no tax base, which means no money to spread around for other things.

Completely false. Anything that turns profit is good?

Almost anything.

Well, say that to Shell who is ruining the Artic, say that to BP who ruined the gulf of Mexico say that to the companies who produce cellphones under absurt conditions for both personal and climate.

The arctic is not ruined, nor is the gulf of Mexico, and cell phones did not destroy the world in December of 2012.

Just to be clear here, I am not saying there should be no regulation at all. But we are definitely buried under regulations that make it entirely too hard to start a new business no matter what country you are in.

What a patently silly statement... those educated people if employed are living in the real world - what is this real world you live in anyway? So all those scientists the ones who say developed fracing or plant breeding or computers, vaccinations, germ theory, effective fertilizer, cold storage, GPS just wasting time huh

I said there were "crap loads" of people who could not live in the real world. I didnt say it was all of them. Notice how I specifically tied it to people in these fields living off of tax dollars.

Most of the things you mentioned come from the private sector. And for every one of those even in government service that do provide something useful, there are 100 that do not. That in fact use up far more resources than they produce.

My "real world" phrase is simple. No matter what it is you do for a job outside of something funded by taxes you have to provide a bigger return than the amount of resources invested in you as an employee. And that isnt just hourly wages its all resources. You have to produce something worth more (or at least break even) than the amount of resources that went into it.

If you buy a piece of beef for $1 and and a hamburger bun for $0.50 and pay me $1 to make it, then you have to be able to sell it for more than $2.50 to stay in business. I think thats pretty simple and most people would agree with that.

But when the government dumps hundreds of millions of dollars into something, and the general public gets nothing in return then all you have done is suck that money out of the economy where it could and probbly would have been used to produce something more than the amount put into it. Politicians are a great example of this, and on both sides of the political spectrum, and the research projects they fund.

A small example:

The National Institutes of Health spent $939,771 on research that has discovered male fruit flies are more sexually attracted to younger female fruit flies. "Video of the encounter," the scientists wrote, "showed that the male was much more attracted to the young fly."

If you are the educated scientist working on this project, then you absolutely do not live in the real world. Does knowing this actually provide any real and tangible benefit? And while this is only $100,000 the US alone spent 18 billion on similar projects last year alone. Cancel that crap and you could buy a ton (well actually lots of tons) of wheat which we currently pay people not to grow.