The Farce of The Global Food Shortage
The Farce of The Global Food Shortage
I personally know people who claim that they do not want to have a biological child of their own because "the world is overpopulated" and there soon "will not be enough food for everyone on the planet". People are starving, they say, and there is not enough food for them to eat. The scientific statistics are convincing enough that communities willingly back them up with these thoughts, and now farmers’ unions are also adding their voices to this issue.
According to Canada's National Farmers Union (NFU), the world's grain supplies will be in the red in the near future due to rising population rates, water shortages, climate changes, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilizers. They say that the world ate significantly more grains than what was produced by farmers in five of the last six years, and at this rate, we will soon experience enormous challenges to feed humanity.
Farmers are complaining that they simply cannot make enough money to sustain themselves because the prices they are selling their crops for are minimal. "Many Canadian and US farmers are going out of business because crop prices are at their lowest in nearly 100 years," said Darrin Qualman, NFU's director of research. "Farmers are told overproduction is to blame for the low prices they've been forced to accept in recent years." This means that many farmers are leaving the crop-growing business for other jobs that will provide the means necessary for survival. Qualman also said that there are huge amounts of food stored in Canada's farmlands, but thousands of people (even the farmers themselves) are forced to rely on food banks! Meanwhile, most North American agribusiness corporations, such as Monsanto, reported huge profits in 2004 - record profits, to be more precise. Five companies currently control the world's grain market. Maybe you didn't hear me correctly - only five companies control the grain market worldwide!
Somehow, I don't think overpopulation or lack of fertilizers is to blame for a food shortage. The old adage is true: the rich get richer while the poor get poorer! Why is it that over 850 million people worldwide, including over 300 million children, go hungry every day while agro giant corporations are bulldozing in the profits in record numbers?
The governments are not innocent either..let's remember that farmers are paid subsidies to grow less food so that market prices will remain stable. On one hand, our politicians are claiming that the world is overpopulated and underfed, but on the other hand, they are paying farmers to stop growing food that is needed to feed people. This leads us to consider that perhaps there is another agenda…
The agro giant companies have been pushing genetically modified foods very heavily throughout the world, promising that these monstrous plants will save humanity from sure starvation and malnutrition. They completely ignore the fact that people simply do not want these kinds of unnatural products and that they create ecological imbalances that further endanger the food supply. They do not mind that millions of people go hungry each day because they refuse to share some of the world's wealth (the fact that this wealth does not even belong to them is another story)...they care only about accumulating more wealth and power.
Researchers from Christian Aid (a British charity) estimate that about 184 million people in Africa alone could die from floods, famine, drought, and conflicts resulting from climate change. Many more across the planet will also be affected. It is time to step out of the fog that the huge corporations have created and see the real problem: big business (in this case, the agro giants who control seed quality, availability, and prices) and government. We have been conditioned to stupidly accept every reason they give us for every disaster or problem without realizing that they are oftentimes contradicting their own words, policies, and stances.