Re: An era of cheap food may be drawing to a close

[Guest guest]

Malthus may finally have been proven correct

What has been happening around the world for several decades has been providing food and medicine to primitive nations. This allowed their populations to explode from what was barely manageable locally to several times as large. Now they are dependent on foreign food aid and still get it and medicines. If the food aid cuts off, then there will be mass starvation.

Associated with this was that population grew much faster than the economy. That means the population was trapped in poverty and would remain there as more children were being born than jobs are being created. Some of the economic troubles are because of corrupt governments who can't manage the nation's resources, leaders more interested in looting all they can rather than building up the country for the future. Then there are competing groups fighting over natural resources or simply just power, along with those like in Sudan who are after resources and genocide of all who are not Muslim. Nigeria has similar troubles.

My point is that these nations have not gone up the development scale to where they reached an equilibrium between births and deaths. Afghanistan went from an historic population of a few million to almost 30 million with most of that growth coming in the last 50 years. Sudan likewise went from a few million to over 40 million, again most growth coming in the last 50 years.

Unfortunately, I don't think our government is willing to end ethanol to increase supplies particularly at home and to neighbors and close allies, but that the current regime would shovel out food to troubled areas in the name of globalism or some such until food reached crisis levels at home.

In a message dated 1/30/2011 8:12:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

An era of cheap food may be drawing to a close

[Guest guest]

As I read post, I thought of an oft-repeated idea on cat-related discussion groups;Cat-loves don't want to see stray cats starve BUT by feeding strays without spaying/ neutering them, we are allowing their population to increase! Being involved with 'Trap, Neuter, Return' is much kinder in the long run than merely feeding the strays. (Adequate Food = more young born.)This may not be transferable to human aid BUT by feeding the poor (a compassionate thing to do, mandated by many religions) the richer nations have contributed to increasing population, without structures in place for these growing populations to survive. (Similar to feeding stray cats without neutering/spaying them)Certainly I don't have any glib answers, other than maybe linking aid to education and limiting families? BUT I certainly don't agree with murdering

children. How to educate a culture that believes in large families??In some article I read that many poor folks haev lots of kids so that some will survive and take care of them in old age, therefor feeding and helping the poor results in less children, BUT that does not seem to be the case? Unless I am missing something.rl'My cat Rusty is a servant of the Living God....'adapted from a poem by SmartSubject: Re: An era of cheap food may be drawing to a closeTo: FAMSecretSociety Received: Monday, January

31, 2011, 4:33 AM

Malthus may finally have been proven correct

What has been happening around the world for several decades has been providing food and medicine to primitive nations. This allowed their populations to explode from what was barely manageable locally to several times as large. Now they are dependent on foreign food aid and still get it and medicines. If the food aid cuts off, then there will be mass starvation.

Associated with this was that population grew much faster than the economy. That means the population was trapped in poverty and would remain there as more children were being born than jobs are being created. Some of the economic troubles are because of corrupt governments who can't manage the nation's resources, leaders more interested in looting all they can rather than building up the country for the future. Then there are competing groups fighting over natural resources or simply just power, along with those like in Sudan who are after resources and genocide of all who are not Muslim. Nigeria has similar troubles.

My point is that these nations have not gone up the development scale to where they reached an equilibrium between births and deaths. Afghanistan went from an historic population of a few million to almost 30 million with most of that growth coming in the last 50 years. Sudan likewise went from a few million to over 40 million, again most growth coming in the last 50 years.

Unfortunately, I don't think our government is willing to end ethanol to increase supplies particularly at home and to neighbors and close allies, but that the current regime would shovel out food to troubled areas in the name of globalism or some such until food reached crisis levels at home.

I__

.

[Guest guest]

Some people around here feed the feral cats which annoys me. There are several colonies around and they are wiping out bird populations. Some also do try to catch them and have them spade or neutered, but the numbers keep increasing.

What I described is the progression of societies from very primitive to advanced. I'm looking for that chart. Found one amusing thing that started out OK but it soon became extremely biased against capitalism, which in itself I might have kept reading if not for how badly biased it was.

Found one. This is a good article that goes into detail explaining the stages of population growth and compares modern nations to the different stages. Simply put, most of the Middle Eastern nations and many SubSahara African nations are stuck in Stage 2, a stage of declining death rates and stable birth rates. These combine to mean rapidly increasing population. However, economic growth has not accompanied this growth so there is great poverty. Here's the link. I think it is worth looking over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

As for solutions, I think nature will take care of that if we don't do ourselves in first. Probably crops will do poorly again if not this year then in the near future as fertilizers become too expensive or even scarce because of oil supply issues, pests and weeds develop greater resistances, etc. Then it will be a matter if nations supply their own needs first or ship food overseas either for charity or prices (which is one case where I think free markets would fail, letting one nation sell itself into starvation). Still, we'll see.

As I read post, I thought of an oft-repeated idea on cat-related discussion groups;

[Guest guest]

Here is a link to another article on the carrying capacity of the land and how populations have outstripped them. Included are mentions of Egypt's population curve, US foreign aid and the perceptions it has created, the massive transfer of wealth, mainly from the US to Africa and other parts of the world, that is already happening and how this exacerbates the problems other nations are having, and discussion of illegal immigration.

It is interesting that some studies show that the US population curve, particularly the birth rate amongst native citizens, compares with the late Roman Empire.

http://www.carryingcapacity.org/va2.html

Quotes:

" The scale of the global effort to help the third world (and the deception it fosters) can hardly be overstated. Harper's Index 1989 reports that forty countries rely on foreign aid for at least a quarter of their national budget. Direct United States government aid had climbed to 14 billion dollars by 1990, and much more is masked within unlikely-sounding programs in the Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Education. Easy borrowing from private-banks ended only when Mexico defaulted on its debt in the summer of 1982. By then Latin America, alone, had received $500 billion. The May, 1989 issue of The World Monitor recalls that "...donations from foreign countries averaged about $20 per person in Africa...$7 per person in Latin America and $5 per person in Asia" (p.34). "

*and*

'

Likewise in Egypt, the Aswan Dam's hydroelectric power, oil and Suez Canal revenues, plus $2.5 million annual United States aid from the 1980 Camp accord (Egypt's share for Egypt-Israeli peacemaking) promoted rapid urbanization, expansion of healthcare and education, and modernization through the early 1980s. All of this was supposed--according to demographic transition theorists--to lower fertility. But it did not work out that way. After slight declines in the early 1970s, fertility stalled for over a decade at about 6.0 births per woman.

By the mid 1980s it became impossible for the average Egyptian to ignore signals that their situation was getting rapidly worse. Population growth was staying ahead of gains in wealth so that per capita income actually shrank. A historically rich land is home to 75 million very poor people, nearly 40 million more than in 1974. The London Economist (1990) calls Egypt "the Mediterranean's Bangladesh." This scenario is heralding a now-rapid fertility decline. Egyptian women averaged 4.5 children in 1991. The decline cannot be traced to improving education or improving anything else, and it cannot come too soon. The population already almost certainly exceeds the longterm carrying capacity of Egypt's lands and resources. "

*and*

"

Multinational aid and liberal immigration policies work at crosspurposes with their stated goals because they dispel motivation to exercise caution and restraint. Family size targets stay high or rise when people think that environmental limits which formerly operated have been relieved; so a perceived windfall of resources or emigration opportunity frequently results in a population explosion in the region supposedly being helped. Conversely, declining fertility--where it has occurred--is linked to deteriorating expectations and to the absence of an emigration option."