the irony of the food crisis

[owencenli]

it's not getting much attention in the u.s. and when it does, the most important cause is ignored. articles talk about how poor countries need to boost their agricultural production, but it was free trade that destroyed it in the first place!!! am i crazy or has anyone else noticed this?

Comments

[vietnamita99]

yes, it's super important yet not covered at all in our so-called free media.

i think the biofuel industry and users are also implicated. Now farmers have to choose between using land to feed people or for fuel.

it's a really serious crisis that we should look at.

[owencenli]

yeah- the biofuels factor shows how the free market fails human needs- of course it's not really free market forces since companies/farmers choose to to grow crops for biofuels (rather than food) because it is heavily subsidized- then again, flooding third world markets with first world food agriculture is not really free market either since first world agriculture is also heavily subsidized- and while there are food riots because of how expensive it is, chavez is criticized for keeping food costs too low!

[mingerspice]

I had not heard/read about people saying that the poor countries needing to boost their production. THAT IS RIDICULOUS.

[owencenli]

yeah for real- I heard it on NPR in relation to Haiti (prime example of neoliberal policy destroying agriculture!) and in newspaper articles (the Post I think)

[owencenli]

now that I think about it- it's a video essay on the nytimes website where I saw the Haiti piece

[owencenli]

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=b7ed2a4ccb7fdae5294a5dbad78a45306d828d99