theseoultimes.com — Today, 854 million people, most of them women and girls, are chronically hungry, up from 800 million in 1996. One of the main culprits of the crisis: industrial agriculture, the very type enshrined in the Farm Bill that's currently before the US Senate. The Farm Bill has far-reaching implications for farmers and food systems the world over.
Oct 22, 2007 View in Crawl 4
phillesh69Oct 24, 2007
But americans are not supposed to be told of this. They have no idea that factory farms dot the landscape of every continent, they have enormous pride in believing it is only being done here in this country, and don't want to realize that land in Africa, South America, and Asia is being taken away from family farmers so that shareholders can get better returns on their investment. They don't need to know that these farmers then flood the already-impoverished cities and live in shanty-towns in swamps and landfills. Don't ruin the perfect little popular-reality they've ensconced themselves in. They get angry when you point out the fallacy of their beliefs.
phillesh69Oct 24, 2007
In many circumstances, and in various measures, lots of people in "developing countries" are much more wise and experienced and capable of self-sufficiency than the average westerner.Most Americans would starve to death if the electricity went out for more than a week in their city or town. They wouldn't be able to get money to buy food, the stores wouldn't be able to "ring up" their purchase, and they wouldn't be able to cook it if they could buy it.America is now a nation of partially educated "specialists". Lots of degrees, but not a lot of sense or sensible reasoning skills. They can earn lots of money, and as long as there is a product or service for sale, they can consume it, but if they were forced to figure things out on their own, they'd fall flat on their faces, then wither and die.
phillesh69Oct 24, 2007
500 million world population is the goal.
pr3998Oct 24, 2007
Their private desires as may be ( and I don't really accept your hellish view of the world), the bigger US and Europe economical growth path must be within Africa. products and goods are worth MUCH more than the minerals that make them.
lukeskopeOct 24, 2007
Understood. In retrospect, "care to cite that statistic" was a little bit condescending, but considering to inane amount of inaccurate or misleading statistics that end up on the interwebs, it was a reasonable request nonetheless. I take it back, you are not a dumb f**k.
hppydkeDec 21, 2007
you're actually gonna use wikipedia to prove your point? yeah, and read the first line. this is a page with an excerpt from a book, which is cited on the page<a class="user" href="http://www.alternet.org/story/13900/">http://www.alternet.org/story/13900/</a>
hppydkeDec 21, 2007
actually, the productivity on a small organic farm can be up to 100X as much as an industrialized farm. it's fairly deceitful the way in which agri-business frames these statistics. they use the term "yield" to refer to the out put of ONE type of crop for each acre, so the yield of say, corn, would be much higher per acre than that of an organic farm. this is because organic farms use techniques such as inter cropping to fight pests naturally, which means that multiple types of crops are planted on each piece of land. when one considers the actual OUTPUT of produce from each acre, organic farms are much more productive. they also make more sense economically. since when does putting 20 calories of energy to get 1 calorie of food energy?
hppydkeDec 21, 2007
here's something about the benefits of traditional, non-organic farming i learned from personal experience. i volunteered on an organic farm in Ecuador. the people of the village i was volunteering at converted their farmland back from industrial farming practices to their traditional farming practice, because the agricultural (pesticides, fertilizers) run off into their water was making them sick. they experienced a massive increase in productivity, and, no longer desperate to gain back the money lost in production, they were able to keep enough of their crops to feed the people of the village AND sell their surplus. the sales of the surplus produce (including chocolate! yum!) was enough to pay for the construction of a hostel, as tourism is increasing to the area because they have wicked water for surfing, a school, and a hospital, and they project that they will soon be able to repair their water piping lost in a storm a few years ago, so they'll have running water again! people are healthier, their children are getting an education, their people are being fed, and their traditional knowledge is being preserved. how can you object to that??