Food Shortage in UK?

[Sekwo]

(20 July 2023, 16:31)Skean Dhude Wrote: It has long been within our power to feed the world but our *cough* leaders choose not to. They would rather line their own pockets and send money, which is not edible, to these countries and then say we have done our bit. Sending food would make more sense but that can't easily be redirected.

In addition the third world won't accept food that we have legislated to be out of date. The food is edible and yet it is refused because it doesn't meet our standards. The people starving would have it but prodnosed do gooders have decided that they would rather they starved than send them something that has an expired out of date label on it.

Another example of the brilliant minds we have in our civil service.

In the 1970s, we had famines that were being caused by "food aid". That was because those farmers who managed to grow crops in those difficult times, and who would normally have got a good price for their labour, had that effort undermined by free "food aid". So, the farmers who managed to grow a small surplus, ended up having no money to invest in improving their small holdings, which made it more likely there would be another famine the next year. The more food aid which was sent, the more local production was destroyed and the more likely another famine became.

The reality, is that western countries were only sending food, because they were subsidising their own farmers and then dumping the food on the world market, which was undermining food production in Africa ... and that was a huge contributor to the problem in the first place. That together with some daft world bank schemes.

If we had actually wanted to help farmers, instead of giving out food, we should have given them money. They would then pay money to local farmers who had an excess, that would boost their profits, allow them to invest in the future and that would have helped stop the famines.