Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
beginning of this section stating how many people a farmer feeds must be viewed
with some doubt.
Global land-grab
Similarly, increases in yields will do nothing if all the best land in the developing
world is owned by outside interests. Oil-rih and land- and water-poor countries
(Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) are in-
vesting heavily in many parts of Africa, Asia, and Eastern and Central Europe. Saudi
Arabia, for example, owns massive wheat fields in Sudan. But the 'grabbing' is not
limited to the Arabian peninsula. While China is buying up large traks of land in
Africa to produce biofuels and food (Spieldoh, 2009), South Korean company Dae-
woo tried to lease almost half of Madagascar's arable land for 99 years, with virtu-
ally no taxes or other beneits lowing bak to Madagascar (he Economist, 2009).
he public in Madagascar rose up in protest, whih not only stopped the deal, but
also led to the eventual overthrow of the government.
Ataking global hunger quantitatively reminds us of the war on terror: a war on
the symptoms rather than the cause. If you had a headahe caused by a brain tumour
and your doctor prescribed acetaminophen instead of hemotherapy, radiation and/
or surgery, you would hange doctors. When food security is hopped into substitut-
able bits, solutions to global hunger take on this bit-like quality, where vitamin A is
understood as a 'solution' even though vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin and rice
a fat-less grain. The bits include yields per hectare, ratio of pounds of feed to live-
weight gain, and ratio of seed-biomass to shoot-biomass. These are not unimportant
but they do not describe the world
in toto
either, especially as far as global hunger is
concerned. A recent study estimates that over 23 per cent of the world's population
is overweight and an additional 10 per cent obese (Kelly
et al.
, 2008). Juxtapose this
to the fact that today over half of the world's population is defined as 'hungry' (Dy-
bas, 2009, p646). In light of fact like this, it's hard for us to believe that there's not
enough to go around. Food just needs to be allocated differently. Increases in yields
and improved conversion ratios do nothing in themselves to improve food access
and reduce global poverty, the root causes of global hunger (Sen, 1981).
In decaying urban areas of once prosperous cities, not only is there a population
unable to access any food, but the kind of 'food' also comes into question. Of course
we produce a lot of food - but what kind of food is it? Is it food? Is a Twinkie food?
For some, the only food options within a reasonable geographic proximity come
