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A quick google search reveals hundreds of organizations dedicated to ending world hunger. Here's one page from the university of michigan:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/food_supply/food.htm
Unfortunately it seems like all of these guys have the cause and effect backwards. They predict (correctly) that world population is rising quickly, and that food production can't keep up with it. Unfortunately, producing more food is like dumping gasoline on a house fire in the hopes that it'll burn the gasoline instead of your house.
Throughout history, world population has always been controlled by the available food supply. Every major advance in technology (e.g. irrigation, commercial fertilizer) and every major advance in food trade (e.g. columbian exchange) has been accompanied by a corresponding jump in population. Feeding starving people now will only enable them to reproduce so that in 20 years we have twice as many starving people and an even more severe food shortage.
It seems like such a waste of everyone's time and effort to me; the only long term solutions involve education and birth control, and the short term solution of giving them food just makes the long term problem even bigger. It seems so black and white to me, can anyone offer another side of the picture?
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Feeding the human population isn't the issue.
Peasant not beeing able to feed themselves is.
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Roffles
Pitcairn19291 Posts
Give a starving person a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.
Ending World Hunger is nice, but thinking about population control and how the population could just skyrocket in the future is quite scary.
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On October 29 2009 02:32 Boonbag wrote:
Feeding the human population isn't the issue.
Peasant not beeing able to feed themselves is.
What?
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Awesome Malthusian thinking.
But you forget we have limited resources - as soon as we run out of those, everyone's fucked!
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On October 29 2009 02:37 Roffles wrote:
Give a starving person a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.
Ending World Hunger is nice, but thinking about population control and how the population could just skyrocket in the future is quite scary.
Give a starving person a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll feed himself, then use his newly aquired skills plus natural human greed to strip mine the fish population, causing future starvation.
As long as we have a market economy and liberal capitalism, there will always be starvation.
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On October 29 2009 02:38 Famehunter wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2009 02:32 Boonbag wrote:
Feeding the human population isn't the issue.
Peasant not beeing able to feed themselves is. What?
Two options :
You grow so you can feed your country / area's population but you can't buy goods because it doesnt bring enough money.
Or
You grow stuff for exports / the industry that isn't food and sells better and makes you able to eat and buy goods.
Poor peasants in India for instance pick the latter. >.<
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I'm just wondering why so many organizations are pouring all these resources into providing the third world with food, when it's so apparently obvious that doing so will only exacerbate the problem in the future. Everyone so far seems to be in agreement with me. I'm interested in hearing from the other side.
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^^^
I don't understand, are you seriously trying to argue against the likes of George Clooney and Bono? Obviously if people stopped taking world hunger seriously all the rich celebs wouldn't be able to feel all good about themselves. Think of it that way.
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People dont feed the hungry to end the problem of them people feeling hungry. They feed the hungry to provide themselves with a 'useful' task in their life.
Another way to view it:
You look at it at the macro scale, you don't care for individuals, they look at the micro scale, they do care about the individuals. It's like boxer microing his marines.
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The definition of the third world is that they actually can't eat propely, that's why we provide them with food -- because otherwise populations would die =[
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On October 29 2009 02:29 Biochemist wrote:A quick google search reveals hundreds of organizations dedicated to ending world hunger. Here's one page from the university of michigan: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/food_supply/food.htmUnfortunately it seems like all of these guys have the cause and effect backwards. They predict (correctly) that world population is rising quickly, and that food production can't keep up with it. Unfortunately, producing more food is like dumping gasoline on a house fire in the hopes that it'll burn the gasoline instead of your house. Throughout history, world population has always been controlled by the available food supply. Every major advance in technology (e.g. irrigation, commercial fertilizer) and every major advance in food trade (e.g. columbian exchange) has been accompanied by a corresponding jump in population. Feeding starving people now will only enable them to reproduce so that in 20 years we have twice as many starving people and an even more severe food shortage. It seems like such a waste of everyone's time and effort to me; the only long term solutions involve education and birth control, and the short term solution of giving them food just makes the long term problem even bigger. It seems so black and white to me, can anyone offer another side of the picture?
You wrong ~~ (which may be why all those organizations do indeed exist.)
The invention of the Haber process did prevent a massive starvation disaster in Europe and ever since then there has been no starvation at all in either (western) europe or north america even though the population has increased a lot.
Point beeing that it is perfectly possible to remove hunger using technological advancment if only the political situation in general is stable.
Of course in countries unstable for other reasons (africa) the only effect was to increase the amount of starving people I agree with that. But as soon as these countries stabilize then it will indeed be possible to solve the food problem.
Demanding abstinence and birth control of an uneducated and starving population is a far more
farfetched solution than peace keeping, trade and other kinds of support meant to improve the ecconomic situation.
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Current world hunger is not related to human population exceeding Earth's carrying capacity.
At current technology levels, we can make enough to feed all of Earth's population. The problem is that Earth's food-producing capacity is not being harnessed and distributed efficiently and equitably.
Taking the pipe-dream situation when all current agriculture is replaced with high-technology, labor-intensive, capital-intensive, energy-intensive farming designed to achieve the absolute maximal yield that the earth can sustain, we can probably expect a ten-fold increase in productivity.
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On October 29 2009 02:51 KlaCkoN wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2009 02:29 Biochemist wrote:A quick google search reveals hundreds of organizations dedicated to ending world hunger. Here's one page from the university of michigan: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/food_supply/food.htmUnfortunately it seems like all of these guys have the cause and effect backwards. They predict (correctly) that world population is rising quickly, and that food production can't keep up with it. Unfortunately, producing more food is like dumping gasoline on a house fire in the hopes that it'll burn the gasoline instead of your house. Throughout history, world population has always been controlled by the available food supply. Every major advance in technology (e.g. irrigation, commercial fertilizer) and every major advance in food trade (e.g. columbian exchange) has been accompanied by a corresponding jump in population. Feeding starving people now will only enable them to reproduce so that in 20 years we have twice as many starving people and an even more severe food shortage. It seems like such a waste of everyone's time and effort to me; the only long term solutions involve education and birth control, and the short term solution of giving them food just makes the long term problem even bigger. It seems so black and white to me, can anyone offer another side of the picture? You wrong ~~ (which may be why all those organizations do indeed exist.) The invention of the Haber process did prevent a massive starvation disaster in Europe and ever since then there has been no starvation at all in either (western) europe or north america even though the population has increased a lot. Point beeing that it is perfectly possible to remove hunger using technological advancment if only the political situation in general is stable. Of course in countries unstable for other reasons (africa) the only effect was to increase the amount of starving people I agree with that. But as soon as these countries stabilize then it will indeed be possible to solve the food problem. Demanding abstinence and birth control of an uneducated and starving population is a far more farfetched solution than peace keeping, trade and other kinds of support meant to improve the ecconomic situation.
That is a good point. Considering that the population in the "west" is still growing, do you think we'll eventually need another Haber-type breakthrough to prevent a second starvation crisis? I expect that the government will eventually step in and impose population control measures (which would come with a whole new set of issues).
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I don't think it's correct to assume that food production won't be able to accompany an increase in population in the future. There's a lot of room for increased production and efficiency, especially in Africa.
Anotehr problem of food aid is a dumping effect on the farmers in these countries. When the developed world dumps excess production in Africa out of solidarity we're screwing with their own ability to create a productive food supply.
EDIT: Population in Europe will decrease significantly, as well as in Japan. Population growth in the States isn't that high and is boosted by immigration. So population growth in the West isn't an imminent issue... its aging will be.
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On September 13 2009 17:19 integral wrote:
The population of any species is a function of food supply. Feeding the billions of people has done nothing to reduce the number of starving people, although it has enabled us to produce more billions. Sustaining these additional billions requires more resources than the previous billions. If these additional billions survive to reproduce, even more people are consuming even more resources.
There are more people starving and hungry in the world than ever before.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The only way to end world hunger is for humans to live at their long-term carrying capacity. In this world, that requires a massive die-off. Education and birth control will do nothing to reduce population; there is a biological imperative to reproduce, and those that do not reproduce will be replaced by those who do reproduce. The only solution to the problem of overpopulation there has ever been and ever will be is death. Anything else is wishful thinking with no historical, ecological, or biological basis.
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On October 29 2009 03:35 integral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2009 17:19 integral wrote:
The population of any species is a function of food supply. Feeding the billions of people has done nothing to reduce the number of starving people, although it has enabled us to produce more billions. Sustaining these additional billions requires more resources than the previous billions. If these additional billions survive to reproduce, even more people are consuming even more resources.
There are more people starving and hungry in the world than ever before.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The only way to end world hunger is for humans to live at their long-term carrying capacity. In this world, that requires a massive die-off.
This is only true if the carrying capacity of the earth is less than seven billion, which is as of yet unsubstantiated in this thread.
Education and birth control will do nothing to reduce population; there is a biological imperative to reproduce, and those that do not reproduce will be replaced by those who do reproduce. The only solution to the problem of overpopulation there has ever been and ever will be is death. Anything else is wishful thinking with no historical, ecological, or biological basis.
As a last-ditch resort, there is state-sponsored fertility control and sterilization. Death camps are a resort even more drastic than those two already drastic measures.
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On October 29 2009 02:46 Biochemist wrote:
I'm just wondering why so many organizations are pouring all these resources into providing the third world with food, when it's so apparently obvious that doing so will only exacerbate the problem in the future. Everyone so far seems to be in agreement with me. I'm interested in hearing from the other side.
I think many people take a much more humane approach to this issue instead of just thinking: "Let them starve to death, that way they they won't have children who would also starve".
Despite the ever present realities of life and the world, i believe that giving human life some sort of intrinsic value is the cornerstone of human society and therefore sometimes the more practical solutions should yield in favor of the more humane ones.
As for the issue itself, i find to be rather simple to understand, is just a mather of underdevelopment and lack of modern agriculture techniques in some parts of the world, such as India, with massive land suitable for agriculture but where many farmers still use ancient methods for growing their crops, making production insufficient, and if the developed contries flood them with their cheap food, it doesn't solve anything because that just puts all those local farmers (and all those who depend on them) out of business, and it doesn't matter how cheap food is if you have no money to buy it.
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Sanya12364 Posts
Economics is such that if food becomes expensive enough, people will either conserve more, or reproduce less recognizing that it costs more to raise a child.
The other solution to overpopulation is what mankind had done through out history. War. You can count on that to severely decimate the population. Plenty of people will be willing participants, but please count me out.
Another natural phenomenon is a plague especially when there is overpopulation. That'll drastically reduce the population as well.
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People love to argue with my above post based on cornucopian ideas of increasing technology, better food distribution, universal birth control and education. Meanwhile, at our current population levels, humans are destroying the very ecosystems that keep us alive. We are the cause of one of the greatest mass extinctions in the history of the planet. Not only are non-renewable resources being rapidly depleted, we are consuming renewable resources far faster than their rate of replenishment. All of this is happening around us as we speak, among all the other insurmountable problems endemic to civilization.
Too bleak? Not even close. When confronted with the harsh realities of our biological and ecological limits, people view biology and ecology as the problem: no one wants to acknowledge that scarcity and pain and death are simply balancing mechanisms. But as long as people identify death as a problem, the real problems only get worse. Ecology doesn't care what species you are or what gods you pray to, you can't destroy/exhaust/pollute entire ecosystems and expect no consequences.
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EPT
