Monday 26 October 2009

Feeding our People

A lady called Amber who has visited this site,has caused me to consider an issue that affects us all; namely hunger.

When you say you are hungry, really you are not, it's merely a mild discomfort and you descend on the fridge and the problem is solved.

Amber tells me that there are around one billion people in the World who suffer from true hunger, not knowing when they will have their next meal.

That meal when it comes, may be simply a bowl of rice or some plant shoots, that have not been destroyed by drought.

In the west we whine on about cancer or heart disease, both problems of an over indulgent society.

Millions are spent on idiots who want to look pretty using cosmetic surgery, to satisfy a passing vanity, whilst in Mali and other parts of the world, people do not even have clean drinking water.

It seems to me that surgeons and doctors who pander to this kind of lifestyle are fundamentally amoral.

The World has the technology to feed these people, just consider the great deserts of the Sahara and the Gobi.

We have the expertise to create de-salination plants, the oil companies have the technology to transport fluids.

They tell us that the seas are going to rise; what better way to alleviate this problem than to irrigate the deserts of the world and allow the hungry to farm for themselves.

This of course would require politicians to permit the movement of peoples to areas where this work could be undertaken.

What prevents this? A market economy that requires farm produce to be of a certain price that ensures farmers in Europe and America receive a subsidised price for their products.

We can as a global society no longer accept this method of doing business, it is not sustainable.

3 comments:

  1. Also much closer to home 1000s sleep rough in our cities every night.
    This is particularly galling in Oz, despite the world financial crisis our economy continues to grow.

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  2. The main thought is that do we have the guts to tackle this problem? A question usualy I ask, why the majority turned the back towords the real problems of our society? Are we only interested in our own physical and psychological pleasures?

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  3. Hi GK I think certainly in the past self gratification has been the root of the problem, but as I said in the post,this is no longer sustainable.

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