>From: James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
>
>On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Zero Powers wrote:
> > I believe the real problem is with food distribution, rather than
> > food production. I have not done the research, but the anecdotal
>stories of
> > silos full of grain in the midwestern US being hoarded and going rotten,
> > rather than being efficienly and equitably distributed seem to support
>this.
>
>
>Having lived near a grain dump, I can attest to the enormous quantities of
>grain that are dumped every year. I have no idea what the exact quantity
>is but I am pretty sure that the U.S. dumps over a million tons of grain
>each year.
>
>How would you define "efficient and equitable" distribution of the dumped
>grain?
Efficient and equitable distribution is obviously getting the grain to the
millions of people who are starving. Granted this is much easier said than
done. But you'll never convince me that letting it rot and dumping is more
efficient or more equitable than giving it, or selling it at "cost" to those
who most need it.
Grain is a true commodity; the reason it is being dumped and left
>to rot is that the markets for selling it are saturated i.e. there are no
>more buyers. Being an easily renewable resource, it makes far more sense
>to dump the excess than to further depress the market by selling below
>cost or giving it away. In other words, meddling in the grain market will
>produce a situation that is even worse than exists now.
>
>A far better way to solve the hunger problem is to fix the broken
>economies of these starving countries (and the governments that created
>them) so that they can afford to buy U.S. grain. This way the buyers
>would benefit in general and the producers would benefit from an expanded
>market. While one could argue that a better solution would be to improve
>local agricultural production, I think that in many cases competing with
>the production efficiency of the U.S. agricultural industry simply to
>have local production is a futile effort and not a useful application of
>resources in the long run.
Yes I agree that the bulk of the problem with hunger in the 3rd world is the
lousy governance going on over there. But how would it hurt the grain
market here to give the grain to countries that can't afford to buy it?
Seems to me such a program might even be good for the US grain market in the
long term. Because if you give them a freebie while they're down on their
luck, by the time they are ready to buy they may be likely to by from us
rather than Europe, no?
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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