Chris Groves #fundie

Chris Groves #fundie bbc.co.uk

I don't agree that lack of fertile land has ever been a problem. The earth has always produced for it's inhabitants in abundance. This struggle for food is a total myth.

23 comments

old comment by Skeptical

Local famines certainly exist, sometimes due to weather conditions and sometimes due to oppressive governments in places where there is plenty of good land but the people are in one way or another prevented from using it. Sometimes it's even because activists try to deny them effective farming methods such as pesticides and genetically modified crops.
However, worldwide, per capita food production has been on the increase for a long long time. I am pretty surprised that skeptics would not know this. There is a lot more food per person in the world than there has ever been, and it's increasing. No, it isn't distributed evenly throughout the world (and sometimes the people have their own arable land but are prevented from utilizing it effectively) but the food is there. It's pretty stupid and ignorant to pretend that it isn't.

old comment by Skeptical

If you were talking to me, Rahub, the point is that's per capita. The growth of the population does not affect something that is being measured per capita. http://www.answers.com/topic/food-production-per-capita-1961-2005-png
That is also with much arable land not being used and other land not being used with the most efficient methods. As to overpopulation; Europe is well below population replacement level, Russia is worried about its imploding population levels, China is quickly declining and the US is below replacement level. The only population explosion that is a worry now is the high numbers of geriatrics who will have to be cared for by the low numbers of young people since not as many are being born. (Hispanics are keeping up and multiplying, so I guess in 25 years they'll no longer be a "minority.")

old comment by rubber chicken

Skeptical is correct. According to the data gathered by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation the amount of food per person has, on average, increased every year since the sixties.
The problem is that the distribution of all that food is not equitable.
The US and Western Europe throw away more food every year than the amount needed to feed every starving person on the planet.
Most countries that suffer from famines are, in fact, food exporters, mostly to the first world. In many cases their most fertile arable land is being used to produce cash crops for sale to the west such as Coffee, Fruit and, amazingly, flowers.
It is the west's desire to have several dozen different varieties of Java on the breakfast table and fresh blooms on their reception desks every day that is costing peoples lives not any form of population growth.

old comment by Felix Wilde

Rubber chicken and Skeptical are right, but Chris is still wrong; it has only been recently that food production per capita has reached a level high enough to eliminate hunger.

Shortage of arable land is not in itself a problem any more, but economic circumstances, corruption and ignorance maintain famine nonetheless. However, this is a recent state of affairs; for most of humanity's history, the scarcity of food and arable land has been a major threat.

I should also point out that the poorest regions of the US still see deaths from malnutrition and easily curable disease. That's not because you can't farm in Appalachia, it's because of economic inequality. Same goes anywhere poverty reaches those depths.

“ This struggle for food is a total myth.”
So, how’s the completely self-sufficient UK doing after the Brexit, Groves? PLenty of food prodoced on the island for the inhabitants?

Chris Groves #fundie bbc.co.uk

23 comments

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