Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty
  • Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 19:57:07 -0000

I suppose we better agree to disagree then Pego. Why do you think colonisation of America, Africa and Australia happened? Politics or because the old home countries were full to overflowing with the means they had at the time.
In 1850 the Irish population peaked over 8 million and then the famine killed a million and millions emigrated resulting in a left over population of around 3 million. The population today is around 4.5 million and Ireland imports over 70% of all the nutrients being consumed here by people and animals.
With a world population over 500 million people we can not but destroy our ecosystems and this is what we can see happening everywhere now. We are loosing biodiversity and species every minute of every day. Our soil is disappearing and there is nary a drop of unpolluted water left anywhere. 500 million was the calculated sustainable carrying capacity of this planet for human kind. I am afraid it has become a lot lower since this figure was first mentioned.
 
Of course politicians are shunting ever more money to the already super rich but at the end of the day this money means only as much as people are willing to give it, especially since we only have "fiat" money everywhere at the moment. There are laws to force one to see these bits of paper as legal tender but at the same time we are heading for a major financial crisis like you can't imagine.
On two occasions that I know of governments (Belgium and Zaire) in the past decided overnight that the only way out of financial problems was to declare the going currency invalid overnight and to start with a complete new one. If this were to happen again the rich and the poor will have exactly the same : nada.
 
As I see it there are multiple factors working together. It is not either overpopulation, drought and primitive farming methods or colonial take over.All these factors work together. Climate change is on it's own capable of sinking our boat. Combine this with overpopulation and colonial take overs and catastrophe is assured.
I don't think "primitive" farming methods are to blame for anything in this list. Often they are the only sustainable methods. Green revolution methods have made it possible to grow more food of a much lower quality but they have also polluted and lost us soil and nearly killed the oceans. In short they can be compared with an enormous mortgage on our future.
 
To my mind there is nothing more sure than that we are in for an enormous crash. And also that the longer we keep going as we are the deeper we are going to fall.
john
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Pego Rice
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2011 12:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] >From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty

I am going to have to firmly stand on policies, rather than overpopulation as primary cause for famines.
 
While overpopulation, drought and primitive farming methods are the popular flogging boys of politicians and corporate pundits for famine,  most, if not all of the last 200 years of major famines have been all about colonial take-over of food production systems for export. http://www.usbornefamilytree.com/irishfoodexports.htm
 
Overpopulation is a problem for the future, right now, it is a cause for increased population stress crime rises, for increased disease transmission, for environmental destruction. The lands of famine, tho, are underpopulated compared to their neighbors, http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2008/3517brit_imperial_famine.html Famine and war are what politicians use to take money and food away from the poor and give it to the rich. It is what politicians use for retro-active birth control, what corporations use to break individual land and job ownership to create a version more easily profitable to themselves.  http://www.globalissues.org/article/10/food-aid-as-dumping 
 
So many of our military activities have been about policies like these. Troops to serve the corporations over their laborers and the communities they have invaded under the falsehood that it is patriotic and defensive.  Tho how anybody but the young believe that anything we repeatedly do overseas, to other lands has anything to do with protecting ourselves is sometimes quite beyond me; http://rationalrevolution.net/war/major_general_smedley_butler_usm.htm
 
Yours, Pego


_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page