By Manifesto Joe
Here's a day-after-Thanksgiving thought. According to a new study, 40 percent of all food produced in the United States is thrown out. The waste, per person, has gone up by 50 percent since 1974.
Here's the news link.
It's bad enough to have wasted 26 or 27 percent of U.S. food back in '74 -- that's ridiculous, considering how many people in the world were hungry then. The amount of hunger is at least as bad nowadays, and stands to get worse with climate change.
As much swinelike behavior as there is in America, what with people rushing into retail stores to trample the help to death on "Black Friday" (see my posts of about this time last year), this seems to me the most criminally swinelike thing of all.
It would be hard to believe that people act like this if it wasn't so evident in public situations. Where I work, we have a community refrigerator, and one has to be careful using it because of the quantity of leftovers, and even the newly purchased food, that is forgotten, sits in the box for weeks, and rots. Some of us there are vigilantes, throwing out spoiled food to make room for the fresh and get rid of the rancid smells. But, this has to be a large number of our employees who are guilty of this negligence, because the problem is so pervasive, stubborn and recurrent.
For one thing, with the U.S. economy in the tank as it is, it's astonishing that a lot of people even think they can afford to be so wasteful. Most Americans only 75 years ago, during the Great Depression, wouldn't have dreamed of it. What kind of transformation has happened, in what is historically such a short time?
Perhaps there is some cultural element involved. I haven't had a lot of experience with people from other cultures, but what I've seen gives me the impression that they eat leftovers and try not to overbuy. "It's a sin to waste food," I once heard a young woman from Germany say.
Why do I feel this way about it, as a baby boomer, a member of the most pampered generation in American history?
Well, I wasn't typical of my generation. My folks weren't well-off to begin with, and my dad got sick with a terminal illness and had to go on disability when I was 11. Food simply wasn't wasted in our house unless it was so far-gone as to be a health risk.
I remember eating a lot of hamburger, cheap chicken, pasta, potatoes, canned tuna, salmon patties, white-trash beans and cornbread, canned or frozen vegetables and fruit, homemade sandwiches, stew and such -- steak was a rare Sunday luxury. Fish? Other than what came out of cans, that was Mrs. Paul's sticks with some ketchup, or occasionally some catfish that my grandfather caught in a nearby lake.
Leftovers were refrigerated and eaten the next day. There was a lot of cold cereal and skim milk for breakfast. Our vegetables often came from a large backyard garden. This was South Texas -- for a time we had a big orange tree in the back yard, and it was my job get up on the tree and pick the oranges for fresh juice.
It wasn't quite the Depression during my small-town '60s childhood. I never went hungry, and no, I never had to walk more than maybe a third of a mile to school. But the lesson was never lost on me that one should never, ever take eating for granted.
I suppose there's no way to legally bust the kind of piglike hominids who commit this waste, but it could certainly be made into something socially unacceptable. With all the social pressure that's been brought to bear on the slinking minority that U.S. cigarette addicts have become, one would think that this wouldn't be a very hard follow-up.
If it were up to me, I'd make it something thought of as on a par with drunken driving or domestic violence. It does unspeakable harm to many -- but the perpetrators aren't compelled to look upon their victims in court, or in the morgue.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
Showing posts with label world hunger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world hunger. Show all posts
Friday, November 27, 2009
Monday, April 28, 2008
World Food Riots: When The 'Free' Market Starves Many Millions
By Manifesto Joe
"Free" market dogma and stereotypes have long portrayed "socialism" and protectionism as ideologies that bring only poverty and hunger to nations. There is some modest historical evidence for that case. Yet now, after decades of globalization, neoliberalism, deregulation, tearing down trade barriers and such, world food prices are alarmingly inflated. Food riots are erupting all over the developing world.
The Bush administration's response to a suddenly burgeoning crisis has been predictably pathetic. Congress has been ineffectual as well. The modern agricultural marketplace, with aggressive and skewed export policies and overemphasis on "free" trade, has brought the U.S. and the world the latest in a cluster of existential crises.
Well-fed Americans can truly no longer just look the other way while many millions around the globe go hungry. World hunger is a threat to our own national security.
Oakland Institute Executive Director Anuradha Mittal, writing for AlterNet, reports:
World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March - an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks alone - while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.
As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.
Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change have all played a part.
But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices.
Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into a downward spiral.
In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers. Dismantling of marketing boards that kept commodities in a rolling stock to be released in event of a bad harvest, thus protecting both producers and consumers against sharp rises or drops in prices, has further worsened the situation.
Those policies of marketing boards, of keeping commodities in a rolling stock in the event of a poor harvest, sound a lot like Keynesian economics in principle, do they not? It's analogous to, in government fiscal policy, running a surplus in good times and a deficit in bad. That's classic Keynes.
Regulation and planning, when done judiciously, moderately and in the genuine public interest, are suddenly looking very wise. Too bad so few people have been heeding that viewpoint for the past 30 years.
From The Washington Post, we have a report on what the Beltway People are doing. The report:
The Bush administration and Congress have been caught flat-footed by rapidly escalating global food prices and are scrambling to respond to a crisis that they increasingly view as a threat to U.S. national security, according to government officials, congressional staffers and human rights experts.
(Never mind all those hungry bellies. National security is Job One.)
The White House released $200 million in emergency wheat stores for developing countries last week ...
Top Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are pressing the White House to devote more money to emergency food aid ...
But administration officials and legislative aides acknowledge that they have only recently begun to focus on the severity of the problem, and humanitarian groups fear that assistance from the United States, which supplies about half of the world's total food aid, may come too late to provide much benefit in the near term.
It is an especially horrible problem in Haiti, one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest countries. Local rice production has been gradually undermined by "market" preference for exports from Florida, rendering the nation much less able to feed its struggling population than ever before. The crisis recently cost Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job.
Poor people down there are literally eating cookies made partially from mud. I'm not joking; there are stories and photos about this. Impoverished Haitians are really doing anything, and everything, that can be done to fill empty bellies.
Welcome to the New World Order -- it's a lot different from the one advertised 15 or 20 years ago. Most of the world literally got f**ked on the altar of "free" enterprise and globalism.
Mittal goes on to make what seem like very sane suggestions to prevent mass starvation:
First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.
Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.
To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give.
Amen, bro. Now try telling that to American Republicans, and in particular to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. You know, one of the three people from among whom we will choose the next U.S. president. That's a chilling thought.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
"Free" market dogma and stereotypes have long portrayed "socialism" and protectionism as ideologies that bring only poverty and hunger to nations. There is some modest historical evidence for that case. Yet now, after decades of globalization, neoliberalism, deregulation, tearing down trade barriers and such, world food prices are alarmingly inflated. Food riots are erupting all over the developing world.
The Bush administration's response to a suddenly burgeoning crisis has been predictably pathetic. Congress has been ineffectual as well. The modern agricultural marketplace, with aggressive and skewed export policies and overemphasis on "free" trade, has brought the U.S. and the world the latest in a cluster of existential crises.
Well-fed Americans can truly no longer just look the other way while many millions around the globe go hungry. World hunger is a threat to our own national security.
Oakland Institute Executive Director Anuradha Mittal, writing for AlterNet, reports:
World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March - an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks alone - while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.
As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families.
Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change have all played a part.
But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices.
Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee, cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries into a downward spiral.
In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers. Dismantling of marketing boards that kept commodities in a rolling stock to be released in event of a bad harvest, thus protecting both producers and consumers against sharp rises or drops in prices, has further worsened the situation.
Those policies of marketing boards, of keeping commodities in a rolling stock in the event of a poor harvest, sound a lot like Keynesian economics in principle, do they not? It's analogous to, in government fiscal policy, running a surplus in good times and a deficit in bad. That's classic Keynes.
Regulation and planning, when done judiciously, moderately and in the genuine public interest, are suddenly looking very wise. Too bad so few people have been heeding that viewpoint for the past 30 years.
From The Washington Post, we have a report on what the Beltway People are doing. The report:
The Bush administration and Congress have been caught flat-footed by rapidly escalating global food prices and are scrambling to respond to a crisis that they increasingly view as a threat to U.S. national security, according to government officials, congressional staffers and human rights experts.
(Never mind all those hungry bellies. National security is Job One.)
The White House released $200 million in emergency wheat stores for developing countries last week ...
Top Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are pressing the White House to devote more money to emergency food aid ...
But administration officials and legislative aides acknowledge that they have only recently begun to focus on the severity of the problem, and humanitarian groups fear that assistance from the United States, which supplies about half of the world's total food aid, may come too late to provide much benefit in the near term.
It is an especially horrible problem in Haiti, one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest countries. Local rice production has been gradually undermined by "market" preference for exports from Florida, rendering the nation much less able to feed its struggling population than ever before. The crisis recently cost Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job.
Poor people down there are literally eating cookies made partially from mud. I'm not joking; there are stories and photos about this. Impoverished Haitians are really doing anything, and everything, that can be done to fill empty bellies.
Welcome to the New World Order -- it's a lot different from the one advertised 15 or 20 years ago. Most of the world literally got f**ked on the altar of "free" enterprise and globalism.
Mittal goes on to make what seem like very sane suggestions to prevent mass starvation:
First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.
Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.
To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give.
Amen, bro. Now try telling that to American Republicans, and in particular to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. You know, one of the three people from among whom we will choose the next U.S. president. That's a chilling thought.
Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.
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