Defenders of industrial farming often point to its capacity to produce food on a global scale as the trade-off for its environmentally destructive methods—but a new report finds that, even in its ostensible strengths, Big Ag falls all too short.
Corporate farmers could never feed the world.
There are no corporations of any kind that can accomplish any task all by themselves.
Small farms run by entrepreneurs can feed the world however.
The lesson here is that size isn’t everything. And lots of times it’s simply redundant, wasteful and a losing proposition.
It’s a pretty good bet that most of the food exported by Monsanto is the food that Fuels the Obesity Epidemic.
Which, in turn, boosts Big Pharma profits as people need more and more Drugs to keep their obesity related illnesses under control.
Which might explain just Why Monsanto & Bayer are now Joined at the Hip.
To be clear, Monsanto doesn’t export food directly, that responsibility falls upon the so-called ABCD group—ADM, Bunge, Cargill and (Louis) Dreyfus, account for between 75% and 90% of the global grain trade.
They create and drive the markets. By extension, they’re the ones who determine what gets planted. Read about them here: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jun/02/abcd-food-giants-dominate-trade
Nadia,
I just wanted to thank you and everyone at Common Dreams for the news you cover. I will share this with others.
I hope readers of this article now understand that the problem is not one of too many people and a need for population control but a problem of distribution and a problem of over-consumption in parts of the world.
It is a problem of capitalism and the need to accumulate profits. The problem won’t go away until capitalism is swept away.
From the article…
Feeding The World: Think U.S. Agriculture Will End World Hunger? Think Again, which found that the vast majority of food produced by U.S. industrial farms last year went to the most developed nations in the world, while the countries most in need of aid—including Haiti, Yemen, and Ethiopia—received half of one percent.
In fact, the top five destinations for American agricultural exports were China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, which received 86 percent of products in 2015 despite receiving anywhere from medium to very high human development ratings, and low rates of hunger, from the United Nations Development Program.
I hope every reader realizes that 86% of the products were sent to places where Big Ag was assured of massive profits. This clearly illustrates why production (the total byproduct of labor) needs to be for the use and benefit of all people … not just for providing profits to a few in the capitalist ruling class.
“Cloak of moral necessity” indeed !
Those of us who oppose the GMO cartel’s monopolies and corruption of government are told that we are the cause of hunger and starvation.
Just another example of corporations, their media and politicians blaming the victims and rewarding the perpetrators.
Industrialization of our Lives? Our sustenance that must be had at all costs has been entrusted to a corporation! Arguably no more alive than a machine! Operated by a trained cadre of behavior-modified people, desperate to comply in return for money. Why? To live, yes. How did we get here? How do we get back to that fork in the spiritual highway where we maybe lost waaaaay bigtime? Big Ag is a functioning monster zombie invention, concocted by morons who pay honest well-meaning people (at first, anyway) to remain mouths shut and to keep shoveling the manure. Such monsters, in the movies, always meet their fate with the midnight pitchfork crowd and the torchlight marching, pissed-off villagers. Hope is eternal. Organic is forever, if we want it.
I think you’re onto something there. These obese people (my family) cannot get enough energy from just a regular portion at breakfast, lunch and dinner. They are always hungry. Gmos (Big Ag industrial-grown food from insecticide-herbicide resistant plants and trees grown from genetically modified seeds) - besides the glyphosates that these gmos are covered with (known to kill billions of honeybees worldwide), gmo big ag row crops do not carry the proper amounts of nutrient trace elements that give a natural healthy skin glow and other attributes needed for healthy living. Obese people are constantly starving and yet bloated. And all because they get virtually zero nutrients and energy from their meals containing either too much herbicide plus too much junk filler in the form of gmo sugars and fats and starches in gmo produced meats vegetables, grains and fuits. Imagine being tired, listless, starving and bloated. monsanto-bayer are thugs.
We aren’t willing to “feed the world.” We aren’t even willing to feed our own hungry, while we ship out and destroy massive amounts of food each year. In the US, we’ve essentially been “culling out” our surplus population, those who aren’t of current use to employers. American priorities have no connection whatsoever with lofty ideals about humanity and moral necessity. “It’s just business,” nothing personal.
You talk the talk, but Americans don’t have those values. Today’s generation don’t even acknowledge what we are doing to our surplus population right here – those who aren’t of current use to employers. We can grasp that not every human can work (health, etc.) and we can see from the statistics that we don’t have jobs for all, yet Americans utterly turn our backs on those who are left out. We lost those very qualities that make humans human.
Capitalism can only exist with continual growth or in Marxist parlance “accumulation of capital.”
Socialism is about a steady-state and zero-growth economic system…in Marxist terminology “simple reproduction”
You want to end the threats to the environment then it is partly your choice…continue tinkering with palliatives proved to have failed in the past, or begin trying to change to a new economic system based upon the production for use and not production for profit.
We can provide abundance for all in a sustainable way. Almost a billion suffer from hunger yet already today we can’t feed everybody.
Tell me why people die from deprivation amid plenty. Tell me why people die from curable and treatable illnesses.
If you don’t think it is capitalism or don’t think capitalism can be replaced tell me why. Much more fruitful to have a real dialogue than posting a cryptic comment.
