U.N. and food organizations define famine as when more than 30 percent of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition and mortality rates are two or more deaths per 10,000 people every day, among other criteria.
What, if anything, should be done?
quinoa ?
feed them
Feed them, but when the c###s that rule are are not to be trusted. :-(
Yep
This is SO not an easy question.
UN humanitarian chief says 20 million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria face starvation and famine.
Ethiopia is facing famine, but as I understand it they do not admit it as such.
Cant find much on it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34776109/thirty-years-of-talking-about-famine-in-ethiopia---whys-nothing-changed
Complete denial.
What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest
Just because I was lucky enough to be born in Britain, does that really make me better or fitter?
Thats what happens in Nature, but as a civilised society, should we stand by and watch others die?
Is that not why we have government, to make sure we don't tread on those beneath us in the food chain?
Also
Quote"Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations."
puts a further question mark on my question No1. As western Society has a reducing birth rate making us less fit.
But you know all of that, so why are you asking?
Back to the OP, I think world and local politics is the biggest cause of the inequity that causes famine. That is a big boulder to move.
Education of the ruling classes?
and then there is CORRUPTION
I didn't know if there was actually enough food in the world to feed everyone. So I did a bit of a search.
found this:
https://www.oxfam.ca/there-enough-food-feed-world
Interesting part of the conversation, about where hunger is greatest. Then I found this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-holt-gimenez/world-hunger_b_1463429.html
QuoteWe Already Grow Enough Food For 10 Billion People — and Still Can't End Hunger
from 2014
Well, my understanding is that when there was last a show of hands, there were only 7 billion people to feed. So WHO IS EATING MORE THAN THEY NEED?
(Caps idea stolen from Mr Machin :) )
I guess I knew there have been surplus's in various products for many years in Europe, but not that gaping mis match. Thanks for asking the question.
So quinoa ? No. dont need any more.
LM's comment is the most accurate so far imho.... feed them. We have food.
TY Rupert
LM is correct.
We just have to get the food to the people who need it. [BIG ISSUE]
>> We just have to get the food to the people who need it. [BIG ISSUE]
Then cycle back to corruption in many cases.
Quote from: Rupert on March 13, 2017, 01:45:42 PM
So WHO IS EATING MORE THAN THEY NEED?
I don't think it's a case of who's eating more than they need (albeit some waistlines will back that up), I think it's more to do with who's producing more than is needed.
I've seen mountains of food thrown away every day. Supermarkets throwing out an insane amount of bread, fast food chains cramming their bins with it. It goes on and on. It's crazy.
Then there are the farmers having to vet their produce because it won't look right on the shop shelves i.e. bananas not being curved enough, or tomatoes not being round.
Admittedly some of it is used in other industries like animal feed, but I'm sure the majority is thrown away.
I really dislike the concept social Darwinism. It wasn't that long ago when similar sentiment was used to justify inaction during the potato famine in Ireland. All modern famines are caused by politics and apathy.
This isn't about production 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. (https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf)
Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html) should be required reading for all.
>>feed them
The cost/benefit is minuscule (i.e. small numerator, huge denominator). Social justice aside, the follow-on effects of feeding people, and especially long-term food security are huge in terms of long-term productivity, demographics (populations ultimately tend to decline as they get wealthier), political stability and so on.
The costs are potentially small. The problem is logistics.
Quote from: Rupert on March 13, 2017, 01:45:42 PM
I didn't know if there was actually enough food in the world to feed everyone.
The HuffPost article mentions the main problem is people who live on less than $2/day and can't afford food
I don't want to sound facile, but bear with me a second for a mental exercise to get a grip on the scope of the problem. There are 2.7 billion people living on less than two dollars per day.
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm
If we just take the "old" developed world - US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia - there are about a billion "rich" people there. If you figure the average it would take to bring that 2.7b up to $2/day is $1, it means that for $2.70 each, we could eradicate the worst of that poverty.
I know that is ridiculously simplistic (and the page I linked to is mostly about how limited it is to look at it in the terms I just did), but I only say it that way to point out that we don't have 2.7b people living on less than $2/day because there isn't enough money in the world and they aren't starving because there isn't enough food in the world.
>>because it won't look right on the shop shelves
Food waste is a huge problem, but it is not just in rich countries. It is estimated that almost half of the food in the developing world is lost post-harvest and a large portion of that is due to the lack of cold storage. I've been seeing more and more buzz about solar-powered cold storage. Just had a good article cross my feed yesterday, but I can't find it, but these give an idea
http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-ceo-of-aldelano-corporation-to-unveil-solar-coldbox-that-could-be-answer-to-global-food-and-water-crisis-145572/
http://www.coldhubs.com/
http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/entrepreneur-pitches-solar-powered-cold-storage-system
Quotesolar-powered cold storage
that is awesome. The big houses in the UK used to have caves/cellars that they filled with snow in the winter, too keep stuff cool for the rest of the year. I struggled to find a reference online, although I have been to it:
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1088185
Yes, the eating to much comment was Chocolate in cheek :) I accept waste is a big problem.
As is the logistics of transporting it from where it is to where it is needed. Or should we be making sure that the food is grown/made where it is needed? I think the latter, as it puts work there too, and so that elusive sense of worth. But I would love to know more about why Ethiopia has been unable to get out of the famine trap.
LM, thanks for that link to Swift for a little black humour, it was not what I expected.... I read Gullivers travels as a boy, but was completely unaware of that. (I feel quite ill.)
Quote from: Rupert on March 13, 2017, 07:37:02 PM
Yes, the eating to much comment was Chocolate in cheek :) I accept waste is a big problem.
I understood that. What I was responding to, was more the comment about waste because of not meeting supermarket standards. That's the sort of thing I always think of. What was new to me until recently was realizing how much waste was happening in the poor world because of the bad cold chain. Obvious once someone says it, but it wasn't obvious to me until I read it.
>>LM, thanks for that link to Swift for a little black humour
I think most school kids in the US are assigned A Modest Proposal at some point. On my trip to Ireland, it ran through my mind constantly both at historic sites ("Chateau O'Reilly, sacked by Cromwellian forces in 1657" over and over) and when I went from the very Irish and insanely rocky and steep farmland of the Dingle penninsula to the gorgeous and fertile rolling fields of the English north.
COLD STORAGE
http://www.coldhubs.com/
QuoteDingle penninsula
honeymooned there on the motorbike :)
did you meet Fungie the dolphin?
https://www.dingle-peninsula.ie/home/fungie-the-dingle-dolphin.html
Quote from: Mackin USA on March 14, 2017, 12:52:24 PM
COLD STORAGE
http://www.coldhubs.com/
Yeah... see my previous. They are one of several and this seems to be something on the move. As Hans Rosling was always pointing out, we think of Sudan of today as like the "West" 200 years ago, but in terms of life expectancy, it's the US of 1970 (70 years) and in terms of income it's Spain in 1950 (about 4000/year).
http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2015$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnNPA;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=1;dataMax=84$map_s;sma=50;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=i214_t001800,,,,;i240_t001800,,,,;i239_t001800,,,,;i212_t001800,,,,;i108_t001800,,,,
Until such time a true Star Trek style replicator is available this will have to do - http://genie.cooking
It will solve all that excess food we waste as everything will be on demand and no need for chilled storage :D
Quote from: Rupert on March 14, 2017, 01:32:09 PM
did you meet Fungie the dolphin?
We missed Fungie. We did spend a fair bit of time at Murphy's ice cream and met Kieran Murphy.
Ah, I missed the ice cream :)
When this is all over, we will go back! (We have been saying that for 24 years)