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

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  • From: Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty
  • Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2011 15:45:43 -0800 (PST)

I am comfortable with that John
 
 << Why do you think colonisation of America, Africa and Australia happened? >>
 
To my mind, it was not the suffering of lack, but the addiction of the wealthy and powerful to excess that drove colonization.  The Pope wrote a Bull allowing Catholic England to exploit Ireland ad nauseum and all of Europe took note that the consequences of rapacious exploitation could be exported to another country and that their own citizenry would become malleable and complicit in that, if they saw the carrot of getting out from under the feudal yoke for themselves.  It was for this exploitation that India's frequency of famine went up by a factor of x20 while England glutted on their crops.
 
I sometimes think you don't read my commentary, John, since I NEVER said that overpopulation was and is not a serious problem. However, overpopulation is a symptom of that extracted wealth.  Famine happened in Ireland and India while overpopulation happened due to cheap Indian/Irish imports, in England.   This makes England dependant on the exploitation of other countries to prevent famine amongst the lower classes of Great Britain.  When Britain is blockaded, as it was during WWII, that particular population issue starts coming home to roost, but the last peacetime famine to touch England was in 1623.  I am picking overmuch on England but all the countries that shaped their economies around foreign exploitations.
 
It is in the normal order of things that negligent overpopulation in good times creates conditions for famine in times of drought or disaster.  You and I seem to respect those traditional subsistence farmers who could flex their growing patterns around needier times and would starve rather than consume their basic stock. This is true of India and other places but not true of Europe and Britain, whose traditional farmers gave way to feudalism and imperialism long ago. Indeed, with the exception of the causes for modern famines and colonialism, we agree on much.
 
Yours, Pego
 
<<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>>





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