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World hunger and western oppulence

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    World hunger and western oppulence

    Is anyone else disturbed by the disparity of access of food between developed and developing nations?

    Some images that have crossed my path recently. Pleased be warned that some are upsetting.

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    Food is a moral right... Do you agree?

    Food is a basic need, but does that make it a right? Some might say that food belongs to those who are strong enough to gather it. But what if there are social constructs that significantly impair an individual's access not just to food itself, but to all that's required to source it? For example, roads, agriculture, water and time. If access to food is a right, who ensures distribution?

    I'm so thankful I live in a nation that has access to every kind of food imaginable. It's a fact worth celebrating and not to be taken for granted. I have enough and more than enough, I am living in a nation that is dripping with wealth.

    If food is my right, then I also have a responsibility to evoke that right on behalf of others. Because if I won't protect their rights, who will protect mine?

    At this stage in my life, I don't have a disposable income. Like a few of us here at PF, I'm living to a strict budget. But it's a budget that allows for extras like barista coffee, take away, etc. In essence, I over allocate money for food. So, for my next shopping cycle, I've decided to refrain from buying any take away or fancy foods. It's only a fortnight, but for me this means no ice cream, no chocolate, no barista coffee or bought lunches, no fetta, no sun-dried tomatoes and all the rich foods I love to indulge in. At the end of the fortnight, I'll donate whatever I save to World Food Programme. At a guess, I'll be saving about $40 or so. Not a great deal, but enough to feed a syrian refugee for 3 months.

    If anyone would like to join with me for their next shopping cycle, I'd love to hear from you. It would be great to be able to say together we raised x amount of money. Just to have the company would be nice too! My next shopping cycle begins Sunday week.

    #2
    Re: World hunger and western oppulence

    Feeding a starving population is a wonderful concept but teaching them to feed themselves goes a lot further to keeping them fed.
    Yes it is important to get them fed but, at the same time, it is important to teach them how to best feed themselves. Finding clean water and teaching them how to find and get water for drinking and agriculture makes them independent.
    The Dragon sees infinity and those it touches are forced to feel the reality of it.
    I am his student and his partner. He is my guide and an ominous friend.

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      #3
      Re: World hunger and western oppulence

      Everytime I think DF can't get more obtuse he proves me wrong.

      Pretty sure these people are more resourceful than any of us. I invite DF to go to sub-Saharan Africa and then survive. When you ask for food and resources we're just gonna be like, "lol gotta learn to make food man".

      It couldn't be that Africa has been ravaged by Imperialist forces in order to exploit it's resources while repressing the local populations. Perhaps, it couldnt be that Western thirst for diamonds and oil have fueled wars and caused enviromental disasters while succeeding in keeping the people in abject poverty in their tribal systems.

      No, the problem is we, the White saviors haven't taught these people to feed themselves.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: World hunger and western oppulence

        Originally posted by ThePaganMafia View Post
        Everytime I think DF can't get more obtuse he proves me wrong.

        Pretty sure these people are more resourceful than any of us. I invite DF to go to sub-Saharan Africa and then survive. When you ask for food and resources we're just gonna be like, "lol gotta learn to make food man".

        It couldn't be that Africa has been ravaged by Imperialist forces in order to exploit it's resources while repressing the local populations. Perhaps, it couldnt be that Western thirst for diamonds and oil have fueled wars and caused enviromental disasters while succeeding in keeping the people in abject poverty in their tribal systems.

        No, the problem is we, the White saviors haven't taught these people to feed themselves.

        I believe I said it was important to feed them AND teach them to feed themselves. There are a multitude of reasons for the lack of food and water in the area. Who are you to "invite" me to a land that you have never been and only seen in the commercial spots on your television? Who are these "White saviors" you are talking about? What "imperialist forces" exploiting the resources and what resources are they exploiting? Are you trying to say that I said it was their own fault? I never implied that. Get a grip on it man and read what I wrote and don't read more into it than what I wrote.
        Last edited by DragonsFriend; 06 Jul 2016, 08:54.
        The Dragon sees infinity and those it touches are forced to feel the reality of it.
        I am his student and his partner. He is my guide and an ominous friend.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: World hunger and western oppulence

          Originally posted by ThePaganMafia View Post
          It couldn't be that Africa has been ravaged by Imperialist forces in order to exploit it's resources while repressing the local populations. Perhaps, it couldnt be that Western thirst for diamonds and oil have fueled wars and caused enviromental disasters while succeeding in keeping the people in abject poverty in their tribal systems.

          Actually, its a lot more complicated than this...

          The first problem is actually gender--half the world's farmers are women, and women due to cultural issues tend to own less land, have less access to credit, to seed, less market access, etc. A good way to fix this is to organize co-ops, along with micro-loans, and other programs that assist women farmers. Its thought that gender equity along could end as much as 17% of world hunger. There's a lot more to the gender issue that crops up in rest of the issues below...

          Another problem is access to health care, including reproductive health care--which also ties into the gender problem. One reason why women are less productive as farmers have to due with child bearing (starting at a super young age--there's an amazing and heartbreaking documentary called Walk to Beautiful that was on PBS and is available on YouTube that highlights this problem) and the problems of childbearing in areas with chronic malnutrition and nonexistent health care. Also, there's a problem of lack of sanitary pads or tampons, which not only can cause infections, but menstruating itself in many parts of the world still makes women "unclean" and restricts their movement outside of the home (this of course, along with taboos against condoms and birth control are also education problems). But, this also affects men--injuries and illnesses can be debilitating without access to medical care, a simple broken ankle can actually be crippling. When it comes to health and maternal/fetal mortality, these places are statistically where we were 100+ years ago.

          Which brings me to the next issue--education. Part of the reason Western nations are far more productive, agriculturally, has to do with scientific advancements...not just in chemistry (pesticides and fertilizers), technology/mechanics (farm equipment), and biology (plant breeding and genetics, horticulture, etc), but also soil science, hydrology, meteorology, etc. The scientific method as applied to agricultures was one of the biggest successes of Western cultures. But...many of these regions lack access to education (and when they have education, its mostly boys that have access to it, which again goes into the gender problem) and the actual physical materials of education--books (and increasingly, computers...which also require electricity, internet infrastructure, etc). Literacy--an education-- increases the likeliness of survival of a child to age 5, it increases a woman's earning potential substantially, makes her more likely to wait to have children, and makes it more likely that she will ensure that her children are educated. But literacy will only take you so far without access to the materials (and the background to understand them) with the information you need. How many college educated Westerners can't understand a scientific study? Its not that they are stupid (well, some of them might be), but that they don't have the specialization of language and background information. Someone has to interpret the science into lay person language and make those materials accessible to persons and communities without resources.

          And then there's the water problem... When I was in college, I was the aquatic director at a summer camp...I also taught nature study. One of the exercises I did (and its common in elementary schools here in the US) was to take a 10 gallon bucket and fill it with water (and some blue food coloring to make it easier to see) and parse out 2 cups into a glass--that's the world's frozen water (or it *was* the worlds frozen water), 2/3 of a cup (another glass) is the worlds ground water, 1/4 teaspoon for the world's freshwater lakes, 1/4 teaspoon for the world's inland seas and saltwater lakes, and (busting out the eye dropper) two drops for water in the atmosphere and one for the world's rivers...everything else is ocean. And here's the problems with that---lots of people (the same people affected by hunger) lack ready access to clean water. Even those that have access to water (clean or not) have to work their asses off to get it--on average women and children (because that's who does this work) walk 10-15 kilometers a day to their water source and carry, spend a significant amount of their time and energy (calories) to do so (gross oversimplification, but men go to cities to look for work (or out to hunt, tend herds, etc), women stay at home and farm)...doing so, they damage their bodies and risk their health from water-borne diseases (more info). And that's just water for cooking, drinking, and sanitation---what about the water for crops?

          Then we have the problem of infrastructure. Its not just about roads (though good roads would be useful--transporting medicines, food for market, getting kids to school easier/teachers to remote villages)--there's often no plumbing, little (reliable) electricity (which means women depend on cooking fires from unclean and unhealthy fuel sources--along with the traveling long distances for fuel, and also the problem of wood for fire contributing to deforestation (deforestation is its own, separate issue that we'll get to eventually)--this, of course, contributes to the health issues as wood fires, dung fires, etc, cause respiratory disease in women and children), no running water, no internet (except in some places where they may be mobile towers and mobile phones powered by generally expensive generators in villages). And, perhaps more importantly, when it comes to food preservation, no refrigeration (though this is something with some low-tech solutions that can work in some parts of the world). Many native techniques that cultures had were lost as a result of colonization and the utter subjugation of native populations by Western powers (but we'll get to colonization/imperialism eventually too). But I think the biggest problem when it comes to infrastructure isn't physical *stuff*, but information distribution--communication, in all its forms. Communicating information about growing or storage techniques, coordinating working together to maximize production, etc

          And there's the land, itself. Lets start with the clearing of forests for farmland (the above link about wood for fuel and deforestation does a pretty good job)... Many farming practices, if not properly managed, degrade the soil, lead to erosion, cause low production--add in something like a flood or a drought or blight or insects (also baboons, birds, etc) and an entire crop can be gone (including seed for next year) in a relatively short time. This is where education comes in--teaching people about soil health, about crop rotation, growing certain crops together, the importance of cover crops and letting a field go fallow for a time, irrigation practices, getting people the right crop for their environment,

          Which is where we should finally get to talk about the elephant in the room anytime we talk about developing nations--Colonialism/Imperialism... We created most of these "problems". Not most of us in our generating specifically--though we've certainly benefited from it, but our countries and cultures were built on the backs of these people either directly (ex--slavery in this country) or indirectly (ex--the Dutch in the Congo)---directly/indirectly is probably bad terminology, what I mean there is that "directly" is a matter of a good chunk of the everyday population was complicit in participation vs indirect was more through the government or industry and everyday individuals didn't really know what was going on, except in vague and romanticized ways. Our countries took groups of people and forced them into geo-political boundaries, we told them to get along (and held the peace for some time) and eventually got kicked out or left, leaving behind people that still, in many cases, hate each other stuck together in an artificial nation-state (a source of quite a bit of world conflict). Or (and), we economically enslaved people to be dependent on our goods to debit them into an unsustainable lifestyle. We leave them our corps (or crops from other places of the world that have similar growing requirements) and a plantation-style of faming, which isn't suited to their ecosystem. We stick our factories in their urban areas, take their crops (palm oil comes to mind) for our own processed foods, and pay them a pittance--if at all (many men and older boys are exploited and trafficked this way to make things like cocoa and palm oil, coffee, etc), or take *their* foods to fuel our superfood craze du jour (acai, quinoa, etc). ...And then we have the temerity to want to "share" (more often dictate, legislate, bribe, or my personal favorite of "selling" for the price of religion via missionaries) *our* science, *our* education, *our* technological suggestions, *our* medicine without out regard for their culture and their dignity.

          And after all of that is said an done, we still have the problems of global climate change exacerbating many of these problems, the problem of violence and war in many of these areas (both a cause and a symptom), the problem of disease (also a cause and a symptom), corrupt political systems (propped up by Western corporations and governments), and more.


          It all comes down to this:
          Imagine a woman has 4 surviving children living on a rural farm in a third world country. The reality of her life is that every child she sends to school is one less child to help farm, get water and fuel for cooking, to do other foraging, to tend what livestock they may have. And why send a girl-child and waste the money to pay for an education (many places don't have public schools) when she can't go for a week every month due to lack of sanitary products? Also (since many of these schools require uniforms, its an added expense financially AND water-wise). Woman and kids have no access to health care, no education about reproductive health, and are forced to use dung from their cows and scrounged firewood for cooking. The dad comes home on occasional weekends via the inconsistent and intermittent transpiration that may exist. More risk to the woman from additional children (and childbearing) or STDs or other illnesses, in addition to the malnutrition due to not enough food variety and the kid with asthma or blind from trichomoniasis (I might have spelled that wrong)--BTW, Aljazeera has some EXCELLENT documentaries on YouTube about different diseases of this sort and how they are being treated and combated in these countries).

          Now take those conditions and add war or an epidemic or a drought causing desertification due to climate change or habitat destruction due to bad agricultural practices due to a lack of education.

          Feeding people is a short term solution to a long term problem. Yes, we have the food to feed people--how do we get it to them? Where are the highways in Africa? How will the food be distributed? Who will protect the people distributing the food from the war or the epidemic? What institutions and organizations are on the ground and in the country that are trusted by the locals and understand their customs that have the network to ensure food gets where it needs to go? How do we keep it from being commandeered by warlords and smugglers and hoarded or sold at a considerable markup, effectively holding the population hostage while food rots in warehouses? All of these things have happened in our attempts to feed starving people, and in some cases, continue to do so.

          We can't keep feeding everyone forever though...at some point, for their communities to be sustainable, to be healthy, they have to be able to feed themselves. Its one thing to feed someone while the drought is on or the war has displaced them, but at some point, its not sustainable--next year, there's an earthquake or en epidemic and more displaced peoples and interrupted farming seasons. Eventually, some of these people probably need to be moved somewhere else... . People deserve the dignity of making a living, not being forced into a situation where they have no choice but dependency (and this is, to make it political) the *real* difference between a conservative and a liberal--I want to feed people while giving them the means to feed themselves until they can feed themselves, so that they can be productive and have the potential for fulfillment (physically, mentally, and emotionally), a conservative (especially in this country) says "eff, 'em...its their own fault, they should work harder or move" and (when they do "move" and become refugees) say "eff 'em, they're dirty foreigners, they don't deserve to be here mooching off us hard working, god fearing, patriotic folks--they deserve whatever they get." (sorry about the rant).


          All of these things take complicated, long term solutions. Three or four sentence answers are useless platitudes.
          Last edited by thalassa; 06 Jul 2016, 09:49.
          Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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            #6
            Re: World hunger and western oppulence

            Originally posted by thalassa View Post
            Actually, its a lot more complicated than this...
            Agree with pretty much everything you said (I won't keep all of the quote, because it's long). Especially on the education point, though. Education is so, so important.

            To expand on your imperialism/colonialism paragraph, there are so, so much politics involved in food and food distribution. There are a lot of cases where rich developed countries basically "dump" their overproduction onto developing countries. Yes, it's cheap food, but local farmers can't compete and therefore can't create a stable agricultural base when that food from the west stops coming. It actually used to be worse (a lot of countries/blocs have quota systems that help reduce these impacts of overproduction), but it's still going on.

            There's also a lot of land grabbing and corporate greed in developing countries. Even when regions -have- fertile land and people to work that land, a lot of corporations from our side of the world buy that land to raise various crops to export (usually either coffee, chocolate, palm or something along those lines, or plants for bio-fuel) and pay people a pittance to work that land. In this respect, buying fair trade goes such a long way, because a lot of fair trade producers are locally based and pay workers a wage that affords them health care and education for their kids. It's not always perfect, but it's usually the better option. But as you said, stuff like that is only a small part of a very complex solution that we can't really describe in a short paragraph.

            I know you touched on that stuff, but it's something I'm really passionate about so I wanted to give my two cents.

            ----

            That being said, Azvanna, I really respect that you care about this, and I think that caring and being aware is such a big first step. For me, caring was a big part of my decision to start buying fair trade products and support sustainable local food production (ie not dumping excesses on other countries or wasting food in mass amounts). As Thal put so beautifully, though, the solutions are complex. Making changes and offering support is definitely helpful, but don't wear the weight of the world on your shoulders.
            Last edited by DanieMarie; 06 Jul 2016, 12:37.

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              #7
              Re: World hunger and western oppulence

              Originally posted by DanieMarie View Post

              ----

              That being said, Azvanna, I really respect that you care about this, and I think that caring and being aware is such a big first step. For me, caring was a big part of my decision to start buying fair trade products and support sustainable local food production (ie not dumping excesses on other countries or wasting food in mass amounts). As Thal put so beautifully, though, the solutions are complex. Making changes and offering support is definitely helpful, but don't wear the weight of the world on your shoulders.
              Thanks, Danie! I had a talk to some of the staff before posting this thread. World hunger really is such a complicated issue as Thalassa has illuminated. It's not a change I'll adopt as a lifestyle, but I definitely want to help every now and then as I am able. When I am earning more, I'll be able to make a more substantial contribution. It's just something I want to do as a one-off for now and then revisit it once a term or so. It is such a huge problem, but I don't want to get stuck like I did with the issue of climate change. I felt it was such a huge problem and I was just one person, so I froze. This way, I've got the ball rolling and am leaving resources in the hands of people who know what to do with it far beyond my own qualifications.

              Speaking of buying fair trade, what do you think of the brand 'thank you?' If you've heard of it, Danie? I remember somewhere you writing that you did a lot of research into the *actual practices of manufacturers instead of just the advertised stuff. I have no idea how to go about finding out that information. Apart from buying from Oxfam all the time, I'm not sure how to be sure...

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                #8
                Re: World hunger and western oppulence

                Fair trade has some issues, depending on the product. You really have to do your research there....products with palm oil, for example, are notoriously bad when it comes to verification. And it's so ubiquitous--used in everything from food to cosmetics to candles to soaps.
                Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                  #9
                  Re: World hunger and western oppulence

                  I realize it's complicated as Thal stated. Buuuut. Water and grain laced with contraception would help.
                  Satan is my spirit animal

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                    #10
                    Re: World hunger and western oppulence

                    Originally posted by Medusa View Post
                    Water and grain laced with contraception would help.
                    As long as it's clean water, and locally sourced grain.
                    Trust is knowing someone or something well enough to have a good idea of their motivations and character, for good or for ill. People often say trust when they mean faith.

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                      #11
                      Re: World hunger and western oppulence

                      Originally posted by thalassa View Post
                      Fair trade has some issues, depending on the product. You really have to do your research there....products with palm oil, for example, are notoriously bad when it comes to verification. And it's so ubiquitous--used in everything from food to cosmetics to candles to soaps.
                      Yeah, definitely not saying it's perfect. As a rule, I avoid palm oil (among other things) all together. It's not possible to -totally- avoid it, but I've managed to cut out most of it (though, I tend to make most things myself or buy other handmade things from other people who make things...that makes it easier). Generally, it helps if you can find information on the producers that made it or the sub-label that releases it (here in Germany, GEPA is -usually- a good bet, but I realise that isn't available in most of the world).

                      - - - Updated - - -

                      Originally posted by Azvanna View Post
                      Thanks, Danie! I had a talk to some of the staff before posting this thread. World hunger really is such a complicated issue as Thalassa has illuminated. It's not a change I'll adopt as a lifestyle, but I definitely want to help every now and then as I am able. When I am earning more, I'll be able to make a more substantial contribution. It's just something I want to do as a one-off for now and then revisit it once a term or so. It is such a huge problem, but I don't want to get stuck like I did with the issue of climate change. I felt it was such a huge problem and I was just one person, so I froze. This way, I've got the ball rolling and am leaving resources in the hands of people who know what to do with it far beyond my own qualifications.

                      Speaking of buying fair trade, what do you think of the brand 'thank you?' If you've heard of it, Danie? I remember somewhere you writing that you did a lot of research into the *actual practices of manufacturers instead of just the advertised stuff. I have no idea how to go about finding out that information. Apart from buying from Oxfam all the time, I'm not sure how to be sure...
                      Yeah, that can be tricky. I try really hard to adopt sustainable practices as a lifestyle, but at the end of the day, I'm just one person. In that respects, supporting more organised efforts can be helpful.

                      I don't know that brand, and I think I can't really be much use as far as fair trade label advice is concerned. We just have totally different brands and labels here (see my GEPA example above).

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                        #12
                        Re: World hunger and western oppulence

                        Originally posted by DanieMarie View Post

                        at the end of the day, I'm just one person.
                        This is what my major contribution is. Remaining just one person and not adding more. I'm not wasteful, either, but not as particular as some.

                        Western opulence is not only western, and it isn't all of the west. There are plenty of starving people in the USA - the backwoods of Appalachia and the Ozarks doesn't make the news much. And there are palaces in poorer countries. Corruption and hypocrisy play huge parts in the global situation, and always have.
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                          #13
                          Re: World hunger and western oppulence

                          Originally posted by Hawkfeathers View Post
                          This is what my major contribution is. Remaining just one person and not adding more. I'm not wasteful, either, but not as particular as some.

                          Western opulence is not only western, and it isn't all of the west. There are plenty of starving people in the USA - the backwoods of Appalachia and the Ozarks doesn't make the news much. And there are palaces in poorer countries. Corruption and hypocrisy play huge parts in the global situation, and always have.
                          This is true.

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