If all potentials could be tapped...

Following on from an earlier posting about the world being capable of growing sufficient, SOYMB reads in the Times of India that a recently conducted survey in India showed food produce needlessly go to waste.

It was found that in six districts alone namely Madhepura, Saharsa, Supaul, Purnia, Muzaffarpur and Begusarai, where 30 percent of the total horticulture produce are cultivated, which include mango, litchi, banana, guava, brinjal, potato, cabbage, tomato and cauliflower, around 33 percent of the total produce are wasted due to lack of post-harvest storage and processing facilities.

The wasted horticulture produce in the six districts are: mango (39 percent %), tomato (39 percent), onion (25 percent), banana (18 percent), litchi (22 percent), potato (24 percent), papaya (10 percent, guava (15 percent), cauliflower (18 percent) and brinjal (14 percent).

The Financial Express of Bangladesh writes that:
"...if all the earth's available arable land, water and technology were to be used to produce food, it could feed sixty billion people, according to one FAO estimate. And the planet currently harbors 'only' six billion. Why is it then that so many go hungry ? More than half the world's population are poor not because there isn't enough to go round but because the ruling classes prefer inequitable systems of development that exclude the majority from the resources necessary to get out of the poverty trap. Consider that food production in Bangladesh over the past decades has been overtaking population growth, yet the percentage of malnourished children ---- and adults --- remains scandalously high. This, in one of the world's most fertile lands, blessed with plenty of sweet water resources, and plenty of people whose potential go untapped, their brains and bodies ignored and neglected. What if all the latent talents in the overwelmingly youthful population were realised in the near future through sustained investment in adequate nutrition and health care, sound education and productive employment ? "

"...every year the world spends over nine hundred billion dollars for 'defence', the US alone accounting for over 600 billion. According to the UN, just one hundredth of the world defence expenditure would be enough to provide safe drinking water for all. But the 'all' hardly matter except as cheap labour or cannon fodder...The global military-industrial complex continue to call the shots. And most of the scientific advancements are harnessed by it to kill or control others."

"...The 21st century began with just about five thousand oligopolies controlling more than a third of the world's productive assets and three fourths of all world trade, through monopolies, mergers and alliances of all kinds, according to the journal, Development Dialogue. Multinational and multisectoral mergers in fact started in the last quarter of the 20th century, and have been leading to the concentration of unbelievable power, capital and knowledge in the hands of a few. One study revealed that just a handful of transnational companies controlled 90 per cent of the global trade in wheat, maize, coffee and pineapple; about 80 per cent of the tea trade; 70 per cent of the global banana and rice markets; and more than 60 per cent of the world trade in sugar.
There have been phenomenal mergers within seed, agrochemicals and pharmaceutical companies as well, said to be some of the fastest growing and most profitable sectors of the world economy. By the mid-1990s mergers in the US saw ten of its leading pharmaceutical firms controlling 35 per cent of the global market, including segments like health care, soaps, cosmetics and chemicals, as well as 'managed care' companies and certain kinds of clinical services designed to use their patented drugs and technologies. Their focus is not necessarily on manufacturing medicines for curing diseases, but are also concocting drugs for all kinds of dubious purposes ---- pills to alter moods, reduce stress, enhance performance, sleep or wakefulness and what not !"

"...This extreme concentration and centralisation of capital, profits and power is in no way sustainable either economically or ecologically, according to many left leaning development thinkers. The core problem is with rapacious capitalism itself, they say, and it has to be addressed radically."

The parting of ways between SOYMB and the article author comes with their recommendation that key countries in the South move out of the 'capitalist monetary and financial system,' and nationalise the oligopolies with the 'objective of socialisation. If only it was that easy and had not been tried so many times before with predictable failure.