/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3291024]

Its funny cause Africa gets Aid and Aids.

[Anonymous No.3291042]

It's depressing that we can't figure out a way to do encourage local food production, AND provide emergency relief when necessary.

And the local despot taking a cut of the aid doesn't help. And the multi-nationals using bribery to make the fields used for cash crops doesn't help either.

But the root of the problem is so obvious it's absolutely pathetic. Western farming subsidies. Get rid of corn subsidies in America and you take the biggest chunk out of world hunger.

[Anonymous No.3291091]

>>3291042
Do elaborate, because it would seem that making food more expensive would make people hungrier.

[Anonymous No.3291094]

>>3291042
Using fields for cash crops is a good idea they can then trade them for things to build infrastructure.

[Anonymous No.3291097]

>can't figure out a way to do encourage local food production
>can't
The word you're looking for is "won't"

[Anonymous No.3291103]

>inb4 NIGGERS

[Anonymous No.3291105]

Not sure about Africa, but in Colombia it had the most lulzy thing ever.

The government, quite a bit supported be liberals in their endeavor, created a program called Food for Peace where they provided Colombians food.

And this bankrupted the local industry and forced people to farm cocoa. And then the US and Colombian government napalms them.

Aid is so double edged yet people(especially liberals) are so vehement and unanimous for it.

[Anonymous No.3291108]

>>3291042
>an informed person on 4chan, who actually knows what he/she is talking about.

[Anonymous No.3291109]

>>3291091
First of all taxing people and then using that money to pay farmers only makes the food seem cheaper, but the fact is this cheaper food out competes non subsidized food. I just wonder how Africans can even pay for subsidized food when they can't even get an aggro economy up, I'm skeptical about subsidies doing harm to them.

[Anonymous No.3291127]

>>3291091

No sir. Farm subsidies mean that western farmers can sell their food at low rates. This means that farmers in countries without subsidies cannot compete, and so must grow cash crops to make a living. When the famines come, which is inevitable in the world of food production, they now have no native supply of food to hoard, and they have no money to buy food as they have been doing.

No subsidies, and suddenly food grown in the west is at it's true price, and more expensive than food grown overseas. So farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia will be able to grow food and sell it for less than the western farmers, because land and labor are cheaper there. And they then will have native food to hoard if famine hits, as well as food to sell in the good times.

So you see, subsidies don't actually make food cheaper. It just moves the cost from point of purchase to the taxes of the citizens. But it is very difficult to get western farmers to move away from this socialised system, especially in America, it seems.

[Anonymous No.3291128]

Have you heard about this thing in Mali? Libya took over a shitload of Mali's land, and then forced the people who owned that land out of their homes.

This is the kind of land-grabbing shit that needs to stop before we can truly fight hunger.

[Anonymous No.3291138]

>>3291127
The problem is these farmers overproduce their crops and having no contracts to sell them so they actually lose money because of how productive they are, so the government steps in and pays them so they can sustain the operation but all they really should do is make less or grow something else.

[Jennie No.3291143]

Why the fuck don't we provide aid to farmers to make and sell food cheaply? Subsidize their farms instead of just throwing food at the problem.

[Anonymous No.3291144]

>>3291024
I don't think we *want* Africa to develop.

[Anonymous No.3291146]

>>3291138
That's why contract farming is such a benefit.

If you can sell reasonable amounts of your crop to a corporation for a reasonable price, while also keeping product enough to sell locally, then a subsistence farmer can keep both his food and make a profit.

[Anonymous No.3291152]

>>3291094

Ideally, yes. Infrastructure is an excellent investment. But the whole things is rigged from the ground up. The despots are more interested in filling overseas banks with laundered money and getting out of there than running the country well. This is why I say that food subsidies are the locus of the problem. Because native, robust food production would so empower the common African that they actually could resist some of the worst despots.

>>3291138

However the individual countries frame it, the result is the same.

[Anonymous No.3291154]

>>3291024
If we send food aid I guess that means we have to provide matching subsidies for agriculture to keep it in business.

This is just one of a litany of reasons that solving world hunger is a lot more complex than many would like to believe.

[Anonymous No.3291156]

>>3291143
Rural development programs are expensive, and we don't want to spend money. We just want to look good. So, the WFP and the U.S. just throw food at countries as a cheap and easy way of looking good.

[Anonymous No.3291165]

>Its funny cause Africa gets Aid and Aids.

[Anonymous No.3291169]

How can these African nations even afford subsidized food in the first place when they produce nothing?

[Anonymous No.3291170]

>>3291143
>>3291156

It wouldn't change anything. Food grown in the west is still cheaper at the point of purchase. The farmers we set up over there would go out of business as soon as we stopped subsidising them as well.

[Anonymous No.3291173]

A classical example of government programs hurting the people they're trying to help.

[Anonymous No.3291180]

>>3291154
We should just end all subsidies and quotas. For instance we can get cheap sugar from south America but because of government mandated quotas we are forced to make our own sugar from corn ---> highfructose corn syrup.