12 myths about starvation

The World Food Program's famine map of Africa
http://www.wfp.org/appeals/africahungeralert/index.html

The situation is dire, and will be far worse than the Ethiopian famine in the previous decade to its wide spread severity. Due to a combination of plague and drought, tens of millions face starvation in coming months. The Famine relief rock concert raised 200 million at the time for Ethiopian famine victims, while, at that time, the daily interest payments on Sub-Saharan debt was 250 million dollars a day (in otherwords the rock concert did not even raise enough to pay the interest on the debt for the day of the concert). The entire debt of the world's most heavily indebted poor countries comes to 250 billion, or about one fifth of the tax cut in the United States. Hospitals have been closed, patients must bring in all their own surgical thread and relative must being food every day, schools go without simple things like chalk, commodities are sold at low prices, as governments are forced to 'restructure' the economy and privatize everything in sight in order to make interest payments on loans which, combined, don't even equal one years worth of spending on the Pentagon, and is just a small fraction of all the combined tax cuts that have been given out in recent times in affluent Northern countries. It goes without saying that nothing is left over for disaster relief, in particular a disaster of such catastrophic scope as what is now unfolding.

The Hunger map for Asia
http://www.wfp.org/country_brief/index_continent.asp?continent=2

Due to the failure of the Monsoon rains earlier this year, India, where most of the hungry people in the world live, is the most hard hit, while hunger affects a great swath of the Asian continent


The Hunger Map for the Americas
http://www.wfp.org/country_brief/index_continent.asp?continent=4

Economic collapse, drought, and structural inequalities have combined to create the hunger afflicting Southern American countries. Although it is not shown on the map, there have been reports of starvation deaths among children in Argentina, where the recent economic collapse has plunged over 50 per cent of the population into poverty. The wide spread economic collapse across South America not only throws into questions the imposed policies of 'structural adjustment' forcefully initiated by the World Bank and the IMF, it also helps to explain the current preparations for a coup in Venezuela in order to 'send a message' all over Central and South America (the message being that the current swing to the left taking place in response to the economic catastrophe will be vigorously opposed by Washington, and will only result in one coup after another).


As well, although it is not shown on the maps, Palestinian children are suffering from malnutrition, and poverty and hunger are wide spread in the occupied territories, following the deliberate destruction by the Israeli forces of first the economy and then the infrastructure and institutions since 2000. On the WSWS site : Malnutrition widespread among Palestinian children
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/aug2002/pale-a16.shtml

The current famine catastrophe is taking place in the midst of a world wide food glut caused by 'over production' of agricultural products. Livestock have traditionally been the prop that has kept modern agriculture from collapse, but even farm animals have not been able to consume the surplus, and farmers have come to depend on subsidies to survive and keep the price of commodities at least above the cost of production.


STARVED BABY COUNTER

Tens of millions of babies have died of starvation and malnutrition since this website was founded...
Information sources - Unicef, Care, World Health Organization

Amount of grains produced in the world which are consumed by livestock - 80 per cent...
Amount of grains produced which are consumed by human beings - 10 per cent...
Amount used in industrial processes - 10 per cent...
Cattle return 1 gram of protein for every 50-100 grams of protein they consume...

Information sources - United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, United States Department of Agriculture



One frequent criticism this post has received is that 'there is no oversupply' since this 'does not make sense in the market place.' However, I thought it was well known that subsidies, and not 'markets' pay for the oversupply. I also though it was well understood that after governments have paid these subsidies, the subject of much debate recently, talk about ending subsidies and so on, governments also do things like, for example, bull dozing tons of produce into land fills and even dumping the surplus into the bottom of the ocean. This dumping and spoilage, paid for by government subsidies, not business, has been going on since I was a little kid, and i thought it was a commonly known practice but apparently not...

It is government subsidy that pays for the massive surpluses and it is government policy to warehouse the goods until they either rot or to dispose of them in landfills etc, not business policy.

Businesses are the major beneficiaries of subsidies not the small family farm (the way the United States subisidy legislation was framed only pays those who produce big time, which, by definition excludes almost every family sized farm in the nation) and so the argument that somehow the rational of market economics drives business decisions in agriculture is false, since the legislation of subsidies encourages overproduction. As for disposing of the surplus that is just something that has happened for years.

Market dogmatism has nothing to do with the surplus, which is government funded, however the dogma of markets before all else comes into play in the destruction of the surplus. What is proved here is that it is possible to live in a world without famine, but policy decisions and market dogmatism make this impossible. The market dogma dictates that now that the over supply exists it must destroyed to avoid driving down prices in the market. The surplus could be given to the poor without distoring the market price, since the poor don't have the money to pay and so no one loses anything, but this is considered to outside the pall of market dogma, which insists that they must pay, even if they can't. Therefore, market dogma dictates that tens of millions must die. So despite the fact that massive surpluses exist, and are the reason why massive subsidies exist globally (otherwise the market price would collapse below the cost of production) nevertheless the market dogmatism dictates that starvation must occur since the poor have no money to pay. A more humane alternative is required, as well as break from that incessant market dogmatism.

Starvation is a consequence of political, social, and business policies and not something inevitable and thus we can see when considering the above that starvation is actually produced by market dogmatism, the same market dogmatism that benefits from the subsidies then demands that the surplus be destroyed to 'preserve the market'.

The study of the dynamics of modern agriculture and food policy and the attitudes towards the 'safety net' (the only possible protection from the destructive effects of 'dog eat dog' market dogmatism) is an example of what happens when the world departs from the One True Faith and descends into Heresy, for modern agriculture is an exception to the norm in that rather than remaining true to the Doctrines of Truth, here we have Left the Path of Righteousness and the result has been the production of a tremendous surplus of food. This straying from the One True Religion is interesting in that it reveals what is possible given a change in faith and religion in this place, away from the inhumane and sterile doctrines of the great Faith in Market Dogmatics, and it indicates that what is really required here is not more and more market dogmatics but rather it indicates what a change in religion could really accomplish for the planet.

What this proves is that the earth is capable of supporting every human being on the planet and that it does not is simply a trenchant critique of political and social policy, and a systemic change in policy and attitudes is all that is required to avoid the catastrophe about to unfold in the coming months, the greatest famine of modern times.


12 myths about hunger - Foodfirst.org

http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html

The following is a summation of some of the text of the page 12 myths about hunger published on the Food First website...Visit the link to the FoodFirst site for the full text of their article...


Why so much hunger?
What can we do about it?

To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught.

Only by freeing ourselves from the grip of widely held myths can we grasp the roots of hunger and see what we can do to end it.

Myth 1

Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods-vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

Myth 2

Nature's to Blame for Famine

Reality: It's too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature's vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it—starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn't lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.

Myth 3

Too Many People

As the authors point out, the very poor are forced to have children as a form of 'social security' and 'old age pension' (the aged can then depend on having lots of children who can share a tiny part of what they have to support elderly parents, and more children means that elderly parents are not a great burden on those who are themselves very poor since the burden is distributed over a large family.) Only in those countries where the poor have some kind of safety net for old age does population control become a reality.

Myth 4

The Environment vs. More Food? This point illustrates that it is possible to produce food without destoying the enviroment, and actually, the point is somewhat redundant given the fact the enormous surpluses already exist.

Myth 5

The Green Revolution is the Answer

The 'Green Revolution' has increased crop yields, however, because income is not distributed among the poor, they do not benefit, since only paupers starve. To quote the article "That's why in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes—India, Mexico, and the Philippines—grain production and in some cases, exports, have climbed, while hunger has persisted." The controversy over bio-genetic engineering of food, combined with patents on food and seeds, only threatens to make the situation worse, since the poor will not be able to pay the royalties on the patents, even if the food supply is increased in this way.

Myth 6

We Need Large Farms

Reality: Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it idle ... A World Bank study of northeast Brazil estimates that redistributing farmland into smaller holdings would raise output an astonishing 80 percent.

Myth 7

The Free Market Can End Hunger

"Reality: Unfortunately, such a "market-is-good, government-is-bad" formula can never help address the causes of hunger. Such a dogmatic stance misleads us that a society can opt for one or the other, when in fact every economy on earth combines the market and government in allocating resources and distributing goods ... government has a vital role to play in countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor. Recent trends toward privatization and de-regulation are most definitely not the answer." The point here is that only paupers starve to death and market dogmatism cannot benefit the very poor since they have no money.

Myth 8

Free Trade is the Answer

Reality: The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened. While soybean exports boomed in Brazil-to feed Japanese and European livestock-hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own country's soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets abroad. Export crop production squeezes out basic food production. Pro-trade policies like NAFTA and GATT pit working people in different countries against each other in a 'race to the bottom,' where the basis of competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum environmental standards.

Myth 9

Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights

Reality: Bombarded with images of poor people as weak and hungry, we lose sight of the obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort .. People will feed themselves, if allowed to do so. It's not our job to 'set things right' for others. Our responsibility is to remove the obstacles in their paths, obstacles often created by large corporations and U.S. government, World Bank and IMF policies.

Myth 10

More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry

Reality: Most U.S. aid works directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, our aid not only fails to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them. Our aid is used to impose free trade and free market policies, to promote exports at the expense of food production, and to provide the armaments that repressive governments use to stay in power ... It would be better to use our foreign aid budget for unconditional debt relief, as it is the foreign debt burden that forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic health, education and anti-poverty programs.

Myth 11

We Benefit From Their Poverty

Reality: Enforced poverty in the Third World jeopardizes U.S. jobs, wages and working conditions as corporations seek cheaper labor abroad ... policies like welfare reform throw more people into the job market than can be absorbed-at below minimum wage levels in the case of 'workfare'-which puts downward pressure on the wages of those on higher rungs of the employment ladder ... In working to clear the way for the poor to free themselves from economic oppression, we free ourselves as well.

Myth 12

Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?

Reality: There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom, taken to mean civil liberties, should be incompatible with ending hunger ... one narrow definition of freedom-the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth-producing property and the right to use that property however one sees fit-is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger ... economic security for all is the guarantor of our liberty. Such an understanding of freedom is essential to ending hunger.


http://www.awitness.org