12 Myths About Hunger

I just found an article what I felt fun, important and sad along with it.

To my disappointment did the ATS search button not found even a related topic

So. Here it is. 12 Myths About Hunger

If it is already posted Move it, or delete.

Myth 1:

Not Enough Food to Go Around

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,200 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods - ­vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs - ­enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

That was the first. Visit the link to read all 12 of them.
This is an important issue. I think the myths are very much real and and a subject what needs more attention.

When will people start to realise the global free market is nothing more then a scheme from a few to get even more filthier rich !???



[edit on 20/2/10 by Sinter Klaas]

Wow - this is quite powerful stuff. So in regards to myth 10, More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry, does that mean there's practically nothing we can do as a citizen?

Does this mean that all the relief funds like Red Cross are possibly just encouraging the elites?

If you want to take action a great organization with a global focus is familyfarmdefenders.org...

I used to do activism with their director before he finished his PhD -- but he's an expert on food sovereignty.

This is a recent great documentary about food aid to Africa:

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 20-2-2010 by drew hempel]

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
When will people start to realise the global free market is nothing more then a scheme from a few to get even more filthier rich !???

When will people realize that the USA is the primary supplier of food to the entire world, that the USA gives away millions of tons of food (and billions of dollars) to "hungry nations" every year, and that the real thieves in the world are the corrupt governments of the "hungry nations" — thieves who accept and hoard the USA's charitable gifts for themselves, or turn around and sell the food at a profit.

— Doc Velocity

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Here's an op-ed I wrote when I was a staff writer for the MN Daily at the University of Minnesota on the largest private agribusiness in the world, headquartered in Minnesota:


MAR. 2, 2000 – EDITORIAL/OPINIONS
———————————————————————————————————————— Cargill: Our taxes, global destruction

Minnetonka-based Cargill is often noted as the world’s largest private corporation, with reported annual sales of over $50 billion and operations at any given time in an average of 70 countries. The “Lake Office” of Cargill is a 63-room replica of a French chateau; the chairman’s office is part of what was once the chateau’s master-bedroom suite.

A family empire, the Cargills and the MacMillans control about 85 percent of the stock. Not only the largest grain trader in the world, with over 20 percent of the market, Cargill dominates another 12 sectors, including destructive speculative finance, according to “Invisible Giant: Cargill and its Transnational Strategies,” by Brewster Kneen.

Taking advantage of the capitalist speculative collapse of 1873, Cargill quickly bought up grain elevators. After vast cooperation with the state-sponsored railroad robber barons, central grain terminals averaged extremely high annual returns on investments of 30 to 40 percent between 1883 and 1889. Cargill hired a Chase Bank vice president to secretly help the corporation through the Depression, writes Dan Morgan in “Merchants of Grain.”

“There are only a few processing firms,” and “these firms receive a disproportionate share of the economic benefits from the food system,” states William D. Heffernan, professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri. Details of Cargill’s price manipulations at the expense of farmers worldwide was documented in the classic study, “Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity” by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins. They report that Cargill has had a history of receiving elite government price information that should be told to U.S. farmers.

That secrecy, along with tax-subsidized market control, enables Cargill to buy from U.S. farmers at extremely low prices and then sell abroad to nations pressured under the same destructive elite corporate control. See the Institute for Food and Development Policy’s Web Site at www.foodfirst.org....

Between 1985 and 1992, the legal entity called Cargill received $800.4 million in tax subsidies via the Export Enhancement Program, a continuation of the infamous “Food for Peace” policy, writes Kneen. Promoted by Hubert H. Humphrey and instituted as PL 480, food became a Cold War tool, i.e. “for Peace.” If we can induce people to “become dependent on us for food,” then “what is a more powerful weapon than food and fiber?” Humphrey declared, according to “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” by Noam Chomsky.

Actually, most of the nation recipients of tax-subsidized Cargill food dumping were, and are, net exporters of food already — policies imposed by colonial trading patterns. The food (for Peace) has been bought cheaply by neocolonial regimes, and then sold at a huge discount on the local market — in Somalia, for example, at one-sixth of the local prices. Many examples of these misguided policies can be found in “Betraying the National Interest: How US Foreign AID Threatens Global Security by Undermining the Political and Economic Stability of the Third World,” by Frances Moore Lappe, et al.

Cargill’s undercutting wipes out the local farmers’ self-reliance, while the revenues (going to the elite) are tied to required purchases of U.S. weapons, writes Chomsky, citing “The Soft War” by Tom Barry, 1988. But the main beneficiary of “Food for Peace” has been Cargill. Keen writes, “From 1954 to 1963, just for storing and transporting P.L. 480 commodities, the heavily subsidized giant Cargill made $1 billion.”

Indian lawyer N.J. Nanjundaswamy reports that a Cargill motto is, “One who controls the seed, controls the farmer, and one who controls the food trade, controls the nation.” Yudof’s recently stated support of federal foreign policy Title XII is another public promotion of the University of Minnesota-Cargill partnership’s raiding of sustainable agricultural cultures.

Cargill is such a damaging threat that in Dec. 1992, 500,000 peasants marched against corporate-controlled trade, and the irate farmers ransacked Cargill’s operations. Fifty people were arrested at the partially completed — and subsequently destroyed — seed-processing plant in Bellary, India. In 1996, 1,000 Indian farmers gathered at Cargill’s office and destroyed Cargill’s records. For more, see www.endgame.org...

Cargill has been doing bio-piracy, stealing traditional products. For instance, it used Basmati, a rice from India, as its trade name, and the company continues to be one of the main promoters of corporate-driven intellectual property rights. The U.S. Trade Act, Special 301 Clause, allows the United States to take unilateral action against any country that does not open its market to U.S. corporations.

The United States, for example, has threatened to use trade sanctions against Thailand for its attempt to protect biodiversity. A bill that has been before parliament in India and promoted by Cargill, “takes away all the farmers’ rights, which they have enjoyed for generations — they will no longer be able to produce new varieties of seed or trade seed amongst themselves,” writes Nanjundaswamy.

The research center, Rural Advancement Foundation International, found that “fifteen African states, among them some of the poorest countries in the world, are under pressure to sign away the right of more than 20 million small-holder farmers to save and exchange crop seed. The decision to abandon Africa’s 12,000-year tradition of seed-saving will be finalized at a meeting in the Central African Republic. The 15 governments have been told to adopt draconian intellectual property legislation for plant varieties in order to conform to a provision in the World Trade Organization.”

Cargill, with extensive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, is also destroying the world’s largest wetland — the Pantanal, in South America — in order to dredge a channel that’s designed for convoys of up to 16 soybean- and soymeal-carrying barges, according to the Institute on Food and Development Policy.

Cargill has been on the Council of Economic Priorities’ list of worst environmental offenders. Mother Jones magazine and Earth Island Journal report that Cargill is responsible for 2,000 OSHA violations, a 40,000-gallon spill of phosphoric solution into Florida’s Alafia River, poor air pollution compliance and record-high releases of toxic waste.

With help from the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, located at www.poclad.org..., states have recently begun to respond to citizen pressure and revoke corporate charters. The assets of Cargill should be revoked, allowing the citizens of the United States to give farmers the benefits of fair trade instead of Cargill’s secretive policy of tax-subsidized global destruction.

reply to post by Doc Velocity


I did not judge or point at any specific country.

It could very well be so like you say. I believe I've even seen it in a documentary.

Big deal !
Those people are still hungry. It doesn't matter who does it. It matters we take action and find who is guilty, lock 'm up and trow away the key.

Now it's probably a little more complicated. So, if you don't mind ?

It would be a better idea to discuss possible options or something.

Where do you base your opinion on ? The guy from the link says it to

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
I did not judge or point at any specific country.

Who said you did? I was adding information to the thread that isn't apparently being acknowledged around the world — that the governments of many "hungry nations" (mainly in Africa) are so corrupt that they steal charitable food donations and emergency food supplies to sell at a profit, while their own people go on starving.

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
It could very well be so like you say. I believe I've even seen it in a documentary.

It is as I say. Anyone who follows the USA's charitable contributions to "hungry nations" knows that it's a fact.

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
Big deal ! Those people are still hungry. It doesn't matter who does it. It matters we take action and find who is guilty, lock 'm up and trow away the key.

Big deal? It doesn't matter who does it?

We already know who is guilty. Look into the corrupt governments of Zimbabwe and Ethiopia if you doubt that. How do you propose that we crack down on these governments and others? Withhold our charitable donations? Impose sanctions on them that will only further the plight of the hungry in those nations?

Perhaps we should invade those and other countries where corruption is rampant, and depose their governments.

Hm? Do you think you could convince the world to go to war against hunger?

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
Now it's probably a little more complicated. So, if you don't mind ? It would be a better idea to discuss possible options or something.

I just suggested a few options. What do you think of them? Or is your preferred option to assail the providers of the food, such as the USA?

I mind very much when the complainers in the world go after the market rather than going after the thieves who are stealing charitable contributions that are intended to help starving indigents.

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
Where do you base your opinion on ? The guy from the link says it to

So far, I haven't posed my opinion... I've stated facts. The USA is the most charitable nation on Earth, feeding more hungry in more Third World nations than any other country on the planet. The USA pours billions of charitable dollars into food, medicine and assistance in Africa alone.

Strangely, even many malcontents in the USA are not aware of this fact.

— Doc Velocity







[edit on 2/21/2010 by Doc Velocity]

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Dr. John E. Peck on the food rules of other countries:

www.youtube.com...

www.familyfarmdefenders.org...

Seremos spoke about the destruction of the indigenous fishery of Lake Victoria with introduction of the Nile Perch in the 1960s and the advent of global free trade that shifted the local subsistence oriented economy towards export markets. He described how cargo planes now arrive with weapons for the Congolese civil war and depart with tons of fish for fancy European restaurants, a disturbing story graphically depicted in the 2004 documentary, Darwin's Nightmare. Because of the voracious invader, nearly 400 cichlid fish species native to Lake Victoria have now gone extinct, and the fishermen able to catch the remaining Nile Perch can't even afford to eat the fillets themselves and are left with the scraps. Traditional management that once respected spawning areas and limited fish catches has been undermined by an industrial style extractive model, reminiscent of industrial agriculture. The obvious alternative is to reclaim community food sovereignty through locally-controlled fishing cooperatives such as are found in the Philippines, Maine, and Japan. Prof. Elinor Ostrom just won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her research supporting the notion that local people are often the best managers of such common property resources.

[edit on 21-2-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 21-2-2010 by drew hempel]

Oh...


My apologies I totally misunderstood you post.

I'm truly sorry

I get that a lot recently

Let's start from the beginning then ?
I'm aware of the fact that America produces shiploads of food. Also that they spend a lot of money giving it away for free.

I believe one of the myths says something like it.

I strongly oppose invading any country at all.
America should stop meddling with others like that !!

I disagree on you only blaming corrupt governments. The people paying them ( making them corrupt in the first place) are the problem.

The filthy rich. Elite, multinationals etc. There is not even a Chance in hell, for a government to be corrupt 100 %

I could tell John Peck a thing or two about Korean food rules and those rules prevalent across Southeast Asia. Much of the indigenous food there is so disgusting that it could never be offered on the Western market. Most of the foods coming out of China are so chemically contaminated that our FDA wouldn't permit them on the American market.

The use of bovine growth hormones is an old story, which is why many if not most Westerners are seriously turning to organic meats and produce.

The "hungry" in Third World nations aren't seriously concerned with growth hormones, I can tell you. They're concerned with where their next meal is coming from.

And, frankly, most "hungry nations" don't have comprehensive agricultural programs, they can't grow their own food. Which is why the USA dumps so many billions of dollars in assistance on them annually.


— Doc Velocity

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Forget what I wrote I didn't read the new one yet.

So. tell me You say corrupt governments are the problem.
I say there is someone paying for them or at least take our money before it gets where it's supposed to be.

[edit on 21/2/10 by Sinter Klaas]

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
I say there is someone paying for them or at least take our money before it gets where it's supposed to be.

Here's an example from Nairobi, Kenya, regarding government corruption and what they are doing with emergency food stores. This is a link to a blog, but the story is from the Associated Press in Nairobi...

Kenya's Corrupt Food Deals

Kenya wasted up to $26 million through corrupt deals in a government program meant to feed the country’s poor, a senior private auditor said Thursday.

A government-commissioned investigation by global audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers found that Kenya lost as much as 2 billion shillings ($26.1 million) to corruption in a program meant to provide subsidized maize to the poor. Those losses are drastic in a country where the government estimates that 46 percent of the population of 30 million lives on less than a dollar a day.

Kenya CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers Philip Kinisu said the government-run National Cereals and Produce Board lost money by selling subsidized maize to fake companies. He also said the agency sold 277,000 bags of maize that it had not been authorized to take from emergency stocks. The government also lost money through delays in importing maize that forced Kenya to pay a price higher than planned because of rising food prices.

So these guys are taking emergency food stores, meant to save their people from starvation, and they're selling the food to fake companies in order to make a profit for the corrupt government officials.

Now, that's just one example of where the food is going. Similar scams are going down in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and other countries all across Africa, as well as in Third World nations in Central and South America and Asia.

Yes, there is a global scam, but it involves thieves in government redirecting emergency food stores, including the millions of tons of food that the USA (and Europe) sends to "hungry nations"!

— Doc Velocity




[edit on 2/21/2010 by Doc Velocity]

Originally posted by Doc Velocity

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
When will people start to realise the global free market is nothing more then a scheme from a few to get even more filthier rich !???

When will people realize that the USA is the primary supplier of food to the entire world, that the USA gives away millions of tons of food (and billions of dollars) to "hungry nations" every year, and that the real thieves in the world are the corrupt governments of the "hungry nations" — thieves who accept and hoard the USA's charitable gifts for themselves, or turn around and sell the food at a profit.

— Doc Velocity

When will people realize the US has been getting most of our fruits and vegetables from South America and China? We grow almost nothing and if China quit supplying us we probably could not even feed ourselves.



This was very revealing current.com... CBS interviews Bill Clinton about this subject in 2008 Here is an excerpt:

[Clinton took aim at decades of international policy making by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs, in economic "structural adjustments" required to win northern aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency subsequently declined and food imports rose.]


[edit on 21-2-2010 by rusethorcain]

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Ok I get your point. Astonishing !

Now what about all the money ? Not all food can be shipped and stored for long.
I never read something about billionaires or so.
Which after a while a few would have a lot of money to spend.

And how can you be certain if the article is not meant as miss info. ?
I Saw w not that long ago, a documentary from the BBC where a reporter went back to a place where a few years ago famine was reported. The people there didn't have a clue about it. The famine a hoax and the money people payed for helping gone. I'll try and find back.

And why would this be accepted by ?
I didn't read it in the newspaper or saw it on tv. It look to me as a very important peace of info.

[edit on 21/2/10 by Sinter Klaas]

Originally posted by rusethorcain
When will people realize the US has been getting most of our fruits and vegetables from South America and China? We grow almost nothing and if China quit supplying us we probably could not even feed ourselves.

If you think the USA "grows almost nothing," then you go to the back of the class.

The USA grows more food than virtually anyone else on the planet, including China.

You are being deceived by Global Union activity, my friend.

See, as part of the new global village concept, the USA has agreed to increase our imports of foreign goods. We agreed to bring in the detestable, chemical-laden crap from China. We agreed to start importing more of the disease-laden produce from Latin America.

We're not importing this crap because we need it. We're importing it as part of our assimilation into the Global Union.

The USA is still producing more food than anybody else in the world. And we're still donating more food to "hungry nations" than anyone else in the world.

Seriously, you need to go back to school if you think the USA is "growing almost nothing"... You need to get out and take a trip through the American Midwest and educate yourself.

— Doc Velocity

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Where are you getting your information?

This is from the Department of Agriculture.
www.ers.usda.gov...

[edit on 21-2-2010 by rusethorcain]

reply to post by Doc Velocity

www.washingtonpost.com...
[The local and national findings are from a snapshot of food in the United States that the Agriculture Department has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents Americans who lack a dependable supply of adequate food -- people living with some amount of "food insecurity" in the lexicon of experts -- and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry. The new report is based on a survey conducted in December.

Several independent advocates and policy experts on hunger said that they had been bracing for the latest report to show deepening shortages, but that they were nevertheless astonished by how much the problem has worsened. "This is unthinkable. It's like we are living in a Third World country," said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, the largest organization representing food banks and other emergency food sources.] www.washingtonpost.com...

Originally posted by Doc Velocity

Originally posted by rusethorcain
When will people realize the US has been getting most of our fruits and vegetables from South America and China? We grow almost nothing and if China quit supplying us we probably could not even feed ourselves.

If you think the USA "grows almost nothing," then you go to the back of the class.

The USA grows more food than virtually anyone else on the planet, including China.

You are being deceived by Global Union activity, my friend.

See, as part of the new global village concept, the USA has agreed to increase our imports of foreign goods. We agreed to bring in the detestable, chemical-laden crap from China. We agreed to start importing more of the disease-laden produce from Latin America.

We're not importing this crap because we need it. We're importing it as part of our assimilation into the Global Union.

The USA is still producing more food than anybody else in the world. And we're still donating more food to "hungry nations" than anyone else in the world.

Seriously, you need to go back to school if you think the USA is "growing almost nothing"... You need to get out and take a trip through the American Midwest and educate yourself.

— Doc Velocity

So. what you just said means they made a deal to give away our food.And take theirs in ? To be part of a global union thingy ?

Because in my eyes it says the same as I did. It ends with some people causing the problem...

There is not a single person in the world to sell ( or give away ) his homegrown food and accept food what is altered and unhealty.
Someone has made this descision for us.
If ther were any good intentions along with it, thes kind of things would be out of the question.

Now I'm very curious if you can explain I'm wrong ?

reply to post by rusethorcain


I saw a video from a guy telling that he made a regular trip and the fields of weeds were no longer there. He actually showed this on a mobile phone he used to record it with. Miles and miles of empty fields.

Drought could be the cause.
The fact we got here two opposing sides of the story already is a sign there is something wrong IMO.

[edit on 21/2/10 by Sinter Klaas]

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Check this out Doc. Lots of things have changed since you went to school. Maybe it is time for a little refresher course?

baltimorechronicle.com...
Growing Hunger in America
Money For Imperial Wars & Wall Street Deemed More Important

www.democracynow.org...
[More than 49 million Americans—or one in seven—struggled to find enough to eat last year, according to a report from the US Department of Agriculture released Monday. That’s the highest total since the federal government began keeping track of food insecurity. Meanwhile, leaders from most of the world are gathered in Rome to tackle hunger on a global scale at the UN World Food Summit, but leaders of the world’s richest countries were largely absent from the summit. We speak with Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System.]


This was a great source of information also
www.worldhunger.org...
and..
rehydrate.org...

We can't live on corn Doc.




[edit on 21-2-2010 by rusethorcain]