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To: fishhound

Hmm.

How many times has mass starvation been predicted? How many times has it happened?


59 posted on 03/11/2008 3:56:36 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum

Well, starvation in the sense of people starving to death? Not often, but famine and system malnutrition are common.

Never, though, has there been a global shortage of food - usually it’s a local shortage, combined with the inability of people in an area to afford food. Like if Indian subsistence farmers get hit with a long drought, they themselves have no produce to market, and then can’t afford the available food. Hoarding compounds the problem. The green revolution fixed a lot of the problem for india, but it is pervasive in less well-developed countries.

A lot of it has to do with governmental intervention - farm subsidies mess with the ability of third-world farmers (the people with the competitive advantage in this labor and land-intensive industry) to compete, especially for textiles like cotton, etc.

It would make a lot more sense for governments to spend a fraction of their subsidy expenditures on ensuring food stockpiles, and then let the market do its thing.


61 posted on 04/27/2008 11:55:10 PM PDT by socalgop
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