Hunger
is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two
decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than
the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more
than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That's
enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by
2050. But the people making less than $2 a day -- most of whom are
resource-poor farmers cultivating unviable small plots of land --
can't afford to buy this food.
The
bulk of industrially-produced grain crops goes to bio-fuels and
animal feed rather than food for the 1 billion hungry. The call to
double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to
prioritise the growing population of livestock and automobiles over
hungry people.
400
experts commissioned for the four-year International Assessment on
Agriculture, Science and Knowledge for Development (IAASTD 2008)
concluded that agroecology and locally-based food economies (rather
than the global market) where the best strategies for combating
poverty and hunger.
Roger
Revelle former director of the Harvard Center for Population Studies
estimated that Africa, Asia and Latin America alone, simply by using
water more efficiently, could feed 35 billion to 40 billion people –
seven to eight times the current world population – and that
assumes no change in technology.The former director of the
Agricultural Economic Institute at Oxford University, Colin Clark,
has estimated that if the world’s farmers were to use the best
methods of farming available, an American diet could be provided for
35.1 billion people. If a Japanese-style diet were provided, this
number would be trebled. Global agriculture currently produces 4,600
calories per person per day, enough food to feed the world
population. The University of Michigan – a switch to organic
agriculture would be more than enough to support an estimated
population peak of around 10-11 billion people by the year 2100″we
have shown that it is possible to both feed a hungry world and
protect a threatened planet.”
Jonathan
Foley, head of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the
Environment.Eco-farming could double food production in entire
regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change, according to
a new U.N. Report.
In
1996 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated
that the world was producing enough food to provide everyone with
2,700 calories a day, 500 more than is needed by the average human.
According
to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997,
78 percent of all malnourished children aged under five live in
countries with food surpluses.”The problem is that many people are
too poor to buy readily available food” …Even though ‘hungry
countries’ have enough food for all their people right now, many
are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.”
Approximately
0.2 metric tons (440 pounds) of cereal grains provide the food energy
an average human needs for a year. Dividing the 2.2 billion metric
tons produced by 0.2 metric tons required per person shows that
current grain production could feed 11 billion people.”
Can
we feed a world of 9 billion? I would say the answer is yes,”
Robert Watson, chief scientific adviser to Britain’s Department of
Environment and Rural Affairs and a former chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
”Hunger
is not a food production problem. It is an income problem.” Robert
Fox of Oxfam Canada.
“There
is no food shortage in the world. Food is simply priced out of the
reach of the world’s poorest people.” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala , World
Bank Managing Director
“There
is not a global food shortage — there is a price crisis” The
Financial Express of Bangladesh
“…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 optimistic FAO estimate
The
Socialist Party recognises that capitalism is a danger to our planet
and promotes a socialist society that would be in a better position
to look after it. Whatever is produced within socialism will be the
best that human beings are capable of. Homes, for example, will be
designed and built with the only motive of housing human beings in
the best possible style. The materials of which they are made, their
facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be the
best homes that society knows how to build. Nobody will be employed
by another person – nobody will sell his or her labour-power or
work for wages. Everyone, in fact, will work for themselves, which
means for the whole of society. Work will be a co-operative effort,
freely given because people will realise that wealth can only be
produced by working – unless wealth is produced society will die.
Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide that
will keep us working under socialism.
Men and women will be free –
free from the fetters of wage slavery, free from the fears of
unemployment, free from economic servitude and insecurity. Nobody
will be found doing a job they hate but tolerate because its pays
them well. Nobody will waste their time learning how to kill
scientifically. Everyone will be set free to do useful work, making
things which will add to society's welfare, things which will make
human life a little better, a little happier. This is an enormous
incentive to work. It is the greatest incentive for co-operative
effort and that is how socialism will operate.
Socialism will be free
of the anomalies and stupidities which are now so common. Nobody will
starve in one part of the world whilst food is being stockpiled or
destroyed in another. Nobody will go cold because they can't afford
to heat their homes. These anomalies arise because capitalism
produces wealth to sell.
Socialism will produce for people's
satisfaction; the only barriers to that satisfaction will be
physical. Bad weather, a ruined harvest or some other natural
calamity may cause a breakdown in supplies. If this happens society
will take steps to deal with the situation, unhampered by the
commercial and monetary considerations of capitalism. Human interests
will be the only consideration.
Socialism will be free of war – the
cause of war will no longer exist. This means that there will be no
armed forces with their dreadfully destructive weapons. It means that
the people who are in the armed forces, together with the rest of the
enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will be able to
serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.
Capitalism has its own laws, built upon its basic property rights.
There is an intricate system to administer these laws -the courts
with their judges, magistrates, lawyers and so on, supported, by the
organisations which train people to take on such tasks. At the end of
the process there is the police force to prevent people breaking
these laws and, it they do, to hand them over to the penal
institutions. None of these things will exist in a socialist
world.This is not to say that socialism will be a hotbed of crime.
Remember that it will be a social system established by the conscious
action of the overwhelming majority who will have set it up because
they have decided that it is in their interests to do so. Such people
will have appreciated that the interests of every individual are
inextricably bound to those of the rest of society. They will realise
the importance of social effort and co-operation and will act and
work accordingly. This will be the power and the force which will
induce people to behave socially and to work co-operatively.
Socialism will not have a coercive state machine and a comprehensive
legal system to enforce conformity. Order and welfare will depend
upon mankind's appreciation of its own interests and will be the
stronger for it.When production is only for human use there will be a
great development of society's productivity. First of all, an
enormous number of jobs which are vital to capitalism will become
redundant.
Capitalism wastes human effort and has a vast army of
bankers, accountants, salesmen, those in the armed forces, and many,
many others who produce absolutely nothing. Socialism will have no
use for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for
sale. Because socialism will be free of the commercial necessities
which hamper production under capitalism, we shall be able to turn
our whole attention to satisfying human needs, to making our lives
happier, fuller, easier. When that happens society will be able to
support itself for the first time in the style to which it is
entitled.This will also apply on a world-wide scale.
Capitalism has
covered the world with frontiers and has fostered patriotism and race
hatred, none of which has any scientific basis. Frontiers are purely
artificial and are often altered at international conferences. Many
workers are proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot
take pride in something over which they have no control. Their
patriotism leads them to fall in with the racial theories which
capitalism's apologists use to excuse the failings of their social
system.
Socialism will have none of this. No frontiers, no racial
barriers or prejudices. The world will be one with only human beings
freely working together for their mutual benefit. Socialism will end
the wasteful, fearsome, insecure world we know today.
Socialism will
set men and women free to live their lives to the full. It will remove poverty
and replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and bring a world of
peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and
brotherhood.
Socialism will be a world worth living for. We
will all, undoubtedly, be better off.
No comments:
Post a Comment