WC Archive

It always annoys me when Western chemical companies and politicians talk about new technolgies feeding a hungry world. I live in the Philippines where the markets are packed with food but many don't have the money to buy. In Canada, where I spent most of my life, grain is so plentiful that some farmers use a stove which can burn it to heat their homes, and the Government of Saskatchewan talks about become a new Saudi Arabia in the production of ethanol. Even the Philippines is talking about using coconuts for bio-diesel. Can there really be a shortage of food?

Its more about feeding the world with less and less land and people needed to do it. If they up yield by 50% they can cut landuse by 33% yielding huge tracks of land usable for other purposes.

Curitiba is one of the examples of the strong connection between the environment and the very soul of Brazil, not in the last place because of the traditionally strong relationship of its native inhabitants with nature.

Brazil continues the tradition of its ancestors in modern history by bringing sustainable thinking into practise. 90% of Brazils electricity comes from hydroelectric power. In fact, the world’s biggest operational hydroelectric plant called Itaipu (native language for “singing rock”: http://www.solar.coppe.ufrj.br/itaipu / http://www.itaipu.gov.br/ ), near the city of Foz de Iguaçu, is based on the border between Paraguay and Brazil (China’s Yangtze Three Gorges Dam is not fully operational yet). From the two nuclear plants that are present in Brazil at least one of them, near the city of Angra dos Reis, was built because of IMF demands (http://www.uic.com.au/nip95.htm).

Another example of the preoccupation with the environment is the experimental nature of its urban planning practise. The most important cities in the country differ fundamentally in structure. There is Rio, the perfect balance between nature and the built environment, embedded in the mountains that reach for the sea. There is Belo Horizonte, a classical grid based city. There is Brasilia, the Utopian capital designed in the shape of an airplane. There is São Paulo, an organism of overwhelming chaos. And there is Curitiba, the sustainable experiment.

The wealth of North America originated from 80% of the population (in the late 1900s and early 20th century) being rural, being agricultural in focus and by being independent families generating their own wealth, without having to surrender any of that wealth to a specific corporation.

One of you mentioned that efficiency is essential to doing and yielding more with less land. I ask you: do we ever question why we need more all the time? Is it because we are told by our religious leaders to multply without thought of consequence? And what would we do with that land instead? In most cases, in gets turned into vast new deserts called "suburbs" or "industrial parks".

Organic farming and individual seed management brings one other critical aspect to food supply: diversity. If one or two companies manage and rule the supply of seed and pesticides (which are only needed for their brand of seed), we risk global starvation if something happens to that breed of seed.

Thanks!
Liam

There is no shortage of food. There is a problem with how it is distributed and used.

f.ex., 70% of grain production goes to feed animals that are then eaten. Extremely inefficient. The rest of it is so badly distributed that on one side you have people starving and on the other you have people dying of obesity-related diseases.