"Solving the Food Crisis"

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus outlines steps that need to be taken to solve the world's food crisis:

Solving the food crisis, by Muhammad Yunus, Commentary, Comment is Free: The global food crisis is a dire reality for millions of the world's poor and a major test for the international community. ... Rising food prices have created tremendous pressure in the lives of poor people, for whom basic food can consume as much as two-thirds of their income. ...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon deserves credit for convening the leaders of 27 UN agencies and programs to organize a coordinated response. They have agreed to establish a high-level task force under Ban's leadership, with sound immediate objectives.

A comprehensive global plan should include the following six elements:

First, the international community must rapidly mobilize at least $755m, identified by the World Food Programme and UN leaders as necessary for emergency food relief. ...

Second, we must ensure that farmers are equipped to produce the next harvest. Farmers in many areas cannot afford seeds to plant or natural gas-based fertilizer, whose price has risen along with the price of oil. The International Fund for Agricultural Development is delivering $200m to poor farmers in the most affected countries... The Food and Agriculture Organization needs an additional $1.7bn to help provide seed and fertilizer. ...

Relative to the size and gravity of the crisis, these sums are very modest and affordable for the international community. In the US alone, high prices have been a boon to farmers and have saved the government billions in crop support payments. The world should respond promptly and generously to help those struggling to survive what the UN calls a "silent tsunami."

Third, beyond these immediate actions, new policies are needed to address the underlying causes of the crisis. Crop subsidies and export controls in many important countries are distorting markets and raising prices; they should be eliminated. In particular, subsidies for ethanol ... cannot be justified...

Fourth, the current crisis should not deter the world's search for long-term global solutions to poverty and environmental protection. For example, we should continue efforts to move to second-generation fuels made from waste materials and non-food crops without displacing land used food production. Even the limited amount of biofuels on the market today have been credited with reducing the price of oil, and next-generation fuels can be economically advantageous for poor countries with much less effect on food production. As bad as the impact of high food prices has been, the impact of high oil prices has been worse...

Fifth, the world must develop a new system of long-term investments in agriculture. A new "green revolution" is required to meet the global demands, even as climate change is increasing the stresses on agriculture. More productive crops are needed, but also ones that are drought-resistant and salt-tolerant. ...

Sixth, to help fund these important initiatives, I propose that each oil-exporting country create a "poverty and agriculture fund", contributing a fixed amount - perhaps 10% - of the price of every barrel of oil exported. This would be a small fraction of the windfall they have been gaining from higher prices. The funds would be managed by the founding nations and devoted to overcoming poverty, improving agricultural yields, supporting research for new technology, and creating social businesses to help solve the problems of the poor, such as health care, education and women's empowerment.

Just as the US should return a portion of its windfall from grain exports through increased support of food aid, so too should oil-exporting countries contribute a portion of the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever known to help feed the poor. ...

[T]he pressures of a growing and more prosperous population will not go away - demand for food and energy will grow, and the poor will suffer most. The need for long-term investment in agriculture and food aid will grow as well.

Comments

[robertdfeinman]

I hate to sound like a neo-Malthusian (again) but this really is the crux of the situation:

The pressures of a growing and more prosperous population will not go away - demand for food and energy will grow, and the poor will suffer most.

As some point overpopulation will have to be faced. If a way to control population growth without force and undue hardship isn't found then mother nature will do it instead. The results will be more disasters like the current situations in Burma and China, caused by natural calamities, but also long term misery as seen in the huge numbers of people living as refugees who have tried to escape from conflicts over resources.

[SGC]

Brilliant analysis by Yunus. So we have the answer to the food crisis. The only question is: Do we have the political will to implement it?

[Bruce Wilder]

Yunus: "the current crisis should not deter the world's search for long-term global solutions to poverty and environmental protection."

Robert D. Feinman said what needed to be said, directly and succinctly. What keeps Yunus from saying it more directly, for example in the sentence I quote above?

[dale]

Robert,
How will overpopulation contribute to more natural disasters?

[robertdfeinman]

Dale:
Overpopulation leads to people living in risky areas. Current examples include low lying shore lines as in Burma, Bangladesh and Indonesia (remember the tsunami?). Then there are the people living under the shadow of currently erupting volcanoes. In the US we have many people living in fire zones in California and other hot, dry, areas.

The current situation in China has been made worse because the pressure of population has led to building substandard structures. This shortcut is seen elsewhere as the collapse of entire villages in Iran showed a few years ago after a similar earthquake. In wealthier Japan buildings are made to withstand earthquakes, but doing this everywhere there is a substantial risk would tax the resource capabilities of the planet. China is already the largest consumer of steel and concrete - look it up.

You can have fewer people living relatively better, or many people living relatively worse. You can even have few people living well at the expense of everyone else. This is the current US strategy (supported, at least implicitly by most of the population). It works only so long as the few can impose their will on the many.

[ron]

Food back in the 50's and 60's was more expensive and a bigger part of the daily budget but with the introduction of large scale applications of nitrogen/pestcides farm size has grown using large scale energy intensive methods thereby lowering the food cost and creating larger crops and fueling a major international trade that has been used to feed a growing world population. Now we are facing the reality of significant costly energy imputs which is now driving up food production on many different levels. The days of cheap energy seem to be over and the leverage created by them with lower cost food production are probably over as well.

[gaddeswarup]

It is not clear to me whether Dr. Yunus meant 'growth in the prosperous poulation' and the corresponding increase in demand or the 'over all increase in population'.

A report from 'The Center for Global Development' says that are enough stocks to meet the current demand
http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/16028/
Excerpt:"...the Japanese government simply stores its imported rice until the quality deteriorates to the point that it is suitable only as livestock feed and sells it to domestic livestock operators. Last year about 400,000 tons of rice were disposed of in this manner at a huge budget loss, displacing an equal quantity of corn exports from the U.S. and thus displeasing another constituency, the U.S. corn growers.

Japan currently has over 1.5 million tons of this rice in storage, roughly 900,000 tons of U.S. medium-grain rice and 600,000 tons of long-grain rice from Thailand and Vietnam. Most of this rice is in good condition, and is incurring large storage charges. Japan would be very happy to dispose of this rice to the world market, but it cannot do so without U.S. acquiescence."
The report also talks about stocks in China and Thailand and their research seems to have some effect already
http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2008/05/rice_prices_fall_after_congres.php

says...

How analytical can the article be when there is always but one solution to any problem. The author cites an "Economist" article which states: "In general, governments ought to liberalise markets, not intervene in them further. Food is riddled with state intervention at every turn, from subsidies to millers for cheap bread to bribes for farmers to leave land fallow."

Not a word about the fact that there could not be a global food crisis without globalism. Not a word about the fact that price for most food commodities is set on some branch of the CME group.

There is a near perfect correlation between "block" cheese trading on the CME and U.S. farm milk price. Look at: http://searching.gao.gov/cs.html?charset=iso-8859-1&url=http%3A//www.gao.gov/new.items/d07707.pdf&qt=dairy+cme&col=&n=1&la=en
You will find that just two traders buy 74% of all "block" cheese traded.

What market?

What we are dealing with is a systems failure. A significant part of the failure comes from lack of feedback from those actually producing food for the world.

Here's one example of feed back before everyone's eyes. Farmers the world over are old and getting older. Before considering a "new" green revolution, a solution to the graying dilemma needs to be found.

John Bunting

[Bupa]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d788e0e4-22d3-11dd-93a9-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Science Briefing: Nitrogen damage
By Clive Cookson

Published: May 16 2008 02:34 | Last updated: May 16 2008 02:34

Warning on nitrogen damage

With all the attention paid to carbon dioxide in the climate change debate, we are neglecting an impending crisis caused by the accumulation of man-made nitrogen compounds in the environment, according to two international studies published on Friday in the journal Science.

Human activity has increased the supply of “reactive nitrogen” in the open oceans by almost 50 per cent above the normal range, and continues to have serious effects on nitrogen cycles in the atmosphere and soil too, the research shows. Increased nitrogen levels in seawater upset the natural ecological balance of the oceans.

“The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world’s peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge,” said James Galloway, environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia, the lead author of one of the studies. The other study was led by Texas A&M University and the University of East Anglia

[ken melvin]

Guns or butter/cars or food.

[Gerard MacDonell]

Robert, the death toll in Burma is much more a reflection of their politics than their geology or demographics.

Says, the CME traders react to the underlying determinants of food prices. They are a small part of the price discovery system but not the cause of price.

Dr. Thoma, Yunus shows his extreme bias when he refers to the high price of scarce oil as generating a "tranfer." The term is purely normative (and misleading from an analytical perspective).

Yunus' suggestion that the oil exporters just give up 10% of their revenue reflects his condescending and childish prior that OPEC does not really deserve its revenue.

He is free to have an opinion. But it is wrong to present that as "economics." Economists do that far too often, which is why the public has learned to tune you out.

Hillary's comments on gasoline were an abomination, but also a good example of the price your profession pays for the lack of objectivity it shows when speaking to the public.

[SGC]

Since others focus on other parts of the article, this is what I found simple, analytical and brilliant:

"Just as the US should return a portion of its windfall from grain exports through increased support of food aid, so too should oil-exporting countries contribute a portion of the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever known to help feed the poor."

[Francois]

Whether we like it or not, we're all involved in this crisis. Denying this simple fact is like the traveler that is told there is a bomb in the economy section of the plane and answers: "Oh! No problem...I'm in first class."

Hunger is the perfect catalyst for extremism, emergence of local despots, war and terrorist recruitment. There is already too many Al-Qeada supporters, no need to help them gaining new recruits.

Thus, we can debate if Yunus is librul, conservative, socialist and what have you, but this situation needs solutions. (please note the plural)

[Bruce Wilder]

SGC: Since others focus on other parts of the article, this is what I found simple, analytical and brilliant:

"Just as the US should return a portion of its windfall from grain exports through increased support of food aid, so too should oil-exporting countries contribute a portion of the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever known to help feed the poor."

Alms? What's brilliant about that? It looks to me like a total refusal to learn from experience.

I learned something today: while the population of the earth doubled between 1960 and 2000, the land area devoted to raising livestock increased 5 times. Just the methane generated from livestock rivals power production as a source for anthrogenic global warming.

[Dr. George W. Oprisko]

I agree with Robert. Human population expanded to consume past increases in food production.

The advent of Peak Oil, with accompanying rising costs for fuel and fertilizer means an end to industrial agriculture.

IA must be replaced by Organic Agriculture, ala the Amish, and Russian kitchen gardens.

All the past subsidies did was decimate local markets and disposess subsistence farmers, eg: Mexico and India.

The given recipe is a plea for subsidy for officialdom, ie: the UN food program, it does nothing for farmers.

If you really want to help farmers, try the following:
ban food colorants
ban margarine
require smoked foods go through the smokehouse
teach organic agriculture
require jam and jellies have fruit as the largest ingredient
permit city dwellers to raise fowl for meat and eggs
put floor prices under farm commodities for the express purpose of reducing the take of agribusiness, eg: Cargill
allot 0.01 ha to each family for a kitchen garden.

INDY

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world/africa/17somalia.html?hp

May 17, 2008

Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

DAGAARI, Somalia — The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali's hut.

She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.

At the same time, a drought has decimated her family's herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.

The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn't even respond to a pinch.

Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.

But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.

This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos.

"We're really in the perfect storm," said Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia economist and top United Nations adviser, who recently visited neighboring Kenya.

There has been a collision of troubles throughout the region: skimpy rainfall, disastrous harvests, soaring food prices, dying livestock, escalating violence, out-of-control inflation, and shrinking food aid because of many of these factors.

Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too.

A recent headline in one of Kenya's leading newspapers blared, "25,000 villagers risk starving," referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. "These places aren't on the brink," Mr. Sachs said. "They've gone over the cliff."

Many Somalis are trying to stave off starvation with a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. Some village elders said their children were chewing on their own lips and tongues because they had no food. The weather has been merciless — intensely hot days, followed by cruelly clear nights.

This week, Saida Mohamed Afrah, another emaciated mother, left her two children under a tree and went scavenging for food and water. When she came back two hours later, her children were dead.

She had little to say about the drought. "I just wish my children had died in my lap," she said.

The United Nations has declared a wide swath of central Somalia a humanitarian emergency, the final stage before a full-blown famine. But Christian Balslev-Olesen, the head of Unicef operations in Somalia, said the situation was likely to become a famine in the coming weeks.

Famine is defined by several criteria, including malnutrition, mortality, food and water scarcity and destruction of livelihood....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16kandahar.html?ref=world

May 16, 2008

Hunger and Food Prices Push Afghanistan to Brink
By CARLOTTA GALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Thieves raided the city flour market in broad daylight a few weeks ago, shooting and wounding two people before escaping with their loot.

"We are not feeling safe," said Hajji Hayatullah, one of the flour merchants, sitting on the floor of his shop with sacks of flour stacked around him. "We don't have security and we don't trust the government to provide it." The merchants got together and hired eight private security guards.

Yet their fears remain, not only about gunmen, but because they sense a growing hunger and desperation in the general population. While there have been no riots yet in Afghanistan over spiraling food prices, the economic pain and hunger are hitting the poor and unemployed, aid agency officials are warning. Teachers have threatened to strike and there have been some angry demonstrations.

"Prices are a big problem for our people. People do not grow enough and so we rely on imports from Pakistan, and the prices are going up daily," Hajji Hayatullah said. "It is very hard for the people, unemployment is the biggest problem, people are very poor.

"I fear if this continues, people will loot the market," he said.

Afghanistan is in a particularly unforgiving situation, Anthony Banbury, director for Asia with the United Nations World Food Program, said during a recent visit to Kandahar. It is not only one of the poorest countries, but it is grappling with a prolonged conflict, and all the attendant problems of lawlessness, displacement, poorly developed markets and destroyed infrastructure, which leave the population especially vulnerable to price shocks, he said.

"For millions of Afghans, the poorer segments of society, who spend up to 70 percent of their meager income on food, these food price rises put the basic necessities simply out of their reach," Mr. Banbury said.

Six million people in Afghanistan, out of a population of about 32 million, are already receiving food aid, and the World Food Program is gearing up to help more.

It has agreed with the government to reopen an assistance plan through bakeries for the urban poor, a program that it ran during the years of the Taliban government but discontinued after the American-led invasion in late 2001. The government is also asking for help in providing food aid to 172,000 teachers countrywide, some of whom are not coming to work because they cannot make ends meet. That alone is an indication that things are getting harder, he said.

"Every school we went to, in every classroom, the teachers were saying we need more salary or food," Mr. Banbury said.

"The people are dying of hunger," said a beggar, Sardar Muhammad, 80, squatting in a Kandahar flour shop. His two sons worked as day laborers in the market and they did not earn enough to feed the family, he said....

[robertdfeinman]

When we first move into this suburban neighborhood (in 1970) one home still had chickens in the backyard. This area had originally been farmland and the zoning regulations still reflected this. I don't know if this has been altered.

So, perhaps instead of "a chicken in every pot" the slogan for this century should be "a chicken in every backyard"...

[Lafayette]

More roadkill

rdf: As some point overpopulation will have to be faced.

But that point is not necessarily today.

Much of arable land is underused, particularly in Africa. It may come as a surprise to many, but Kenya is a net exporter of food crops. (It is emptying a large internal lake to do so, but who cares -- as long as everybody gets paid. Kenya is literally exporting its water in the form of lettuce.)

The Doha Round was an exercise in failure because the Americans and the Europeans could not agree on a compromise regarding farm subventions for export. The African nations have been clamoring long and hard for such subventions to stop, because they promote low export prices which de-incentivize local African farmers from planting.

So, what has happened? Cereal prices have skyrocketed, European farmers (also some large conglomerates) are earning decent revenues, finally, after a very long period of the opposite. Are the African farmers planting? No, because they have no export crop with which to earn the revenues to plant next year's seed. And, their countries are actually obliged to import the higher-priced import cereals.

I am looking out my window to see the Spring crop of wheat growing in the field across from me, here in France. It will be a bumper crop and the price is ripe. Farmers will have had three crops in a row with higher prices in return.

Are the subventions really all that necessary any longer? We shall see. France has the presidency of the EU as of July 1st. France and Germany have been most adamant in not changing the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It would be, however, the right moment to come to an agreement regarding the CAP -- which is a wasteful mess of subsidies to European farmers (including, of all people, the Queen of England and, believe this!, the Prince of Monaco). It needs to be put out of its misery.

The timing could not be more opportune to whack the CAP in shape, since farming revenues are up and the need of CAP subsidies is low.

American subsidizing of farmers is nothing but Corporate Welfare for the BigAggie conglomerates. It should be closed down. So, is there, finally, common ground for action. Will it happen?

Not bloody likely. Bush will do NOTHING to alienate the Republicans' moneyed friends at BigAggie, in order to help McBush get elected. Which gives the French a great excuse for them to do nothing as well ... and the EU presidency passes hands on December 30th.

Doing nothing is a selfishly win-win situation for both, so nothing will be done.

And what about the losers, the starving Africans? Just more roadkill on the highway of life. Who cares?

[robertdfeinman]

Laf:
It is much less disruptive to put population growth policies into place then it is to have deal with the increase after it has taken place.

Even super optimist Jeffrey Sachs now recognizes that an additional 2.4 billion people by mid century is not a good idea. [Book review in Sunday's NY Times - out tomorrow.]

It has been well documented that the cheapest and quickest way to reduce the birth rate is to educate women. Birth rates drop dramatically within a generation.

Certainly there are things that can be done now to alleviate the current crises. We know many aspects of this problem are political or economic in nature and not resource constrained, but providing short term aid doesn't mean that the long term demographic problems should be postponed.

Yunus is a practical man and his focus on dealing with issues of the moment is entirely appropriate (for him), but that's no reason for others to drop the ball.

[anne]

Muhammad Yunus has written an essay I want to agree with but am not quite sure how since the essay is so broad and the broadness makes it never seem quite right when I think country to country. I could link food problems in Somalia and Afghanistan to war, but the problems in each country still differ one from the other and the problems differ even regionally in each country. Then there is Iraq which also has a food problem, though this is little discussed, that again differs from that in Somalis or Afghanistan and region to region.

Nonetheless, conflict is a prime issue in food problems from Kenya and Chad and Sudan and Yemen and Ethiopia and Eritrea, clear to northwest Pakistan, but conflict costs have not been seriously considered in understanding the food problems, while conflict is only partially responsible in the countries named.

[Lafayette]

rdf: It is much less disruptive to put population growth policies into place then it is to have deal with the increase after it has taken place.

Right! Let's convince the African leaders to kill every third child. As an incentive, we'll tie it to Farm Aid.

How about a kilobuck a head? That should do, shouldn't it?

C'mon, get real. Contraception has been tried in Africa, in India and parts of Asia. Each attempt has failed to curtail seriously population growth.

[SGC]

Bruce W.

I'm a bit bewildered how a bunch of economists can fail to acknowledge that a major cause of poverty in the developing world is the destruction of their principle export industries due to dumping of agricultural goods by the US and EU. (With the help of outrageously large subsidies, the share of the US and EU in world agricultural exports has increased over time to exceed 50%. Guess whose share has fallen?) Transfers from those who caused the problem to those who suffer from it is just something that would be legally enforceable if this had been done by a firm within the US or EU.

The fact that Yunus essay implicitly understands this reality gives it a quality that is missing from most discussions of the food crisis.

Surely one of the best ways to reduce population growth is to put an end to policies that prevent these countries from growing out of poverty. There is nothing in Yunus' essay to promote population growth, except to the degree that he believes in preventing people from dying of starvation.

[robertdfeinman]

Laf:
OK, last time, you are acting like a troll and I usually don't bother to respond, however...
I said:
It has been well documented that the cheapest and quickest way to reduce the birth rate is to educate women.

And you said:
Right! Let's convince the African leaders to kill every third child.
...
Contraception has been tried in Africa, in India and parts of Asia. Each attempt has failed to curtail seriously population growth.

Do you really want to be taken seriously on this site when you say stupid things like this? Neither of your remarks had anything to do with my comment. I also suspect you haven't done any research on the relationship between the level of education of women in rural areas and the birth rate. Instead of demonstrating your ignorance, take a bit of time and do some research.

[anne]

"It has been well documented that the cheapest and quickest way to reduce the birth rate is to educate women."

Please add a reference if possible; I would guess there is considerable truth here but knowing so is different. In any event women are critically important to development, but have often been neglected in development planning in failing to look explicitly to their economic roles for support.

I need to pay more attention to the matter.

[robertdfeinman]

Anne:
Here's a sample:
http://www.aag.org/Education/center/cgge-aag%20site/Population/lesson3_page2.html

There is some special data about Niger (there was a PBS program about it), but I can't locate the link. I think a bit of searching on the web will get you more data.

[Lafayette]

rdf: OK, last time, you are acting like a troll

Tut, tut ... such language. Gotta chip on ya shoulder?

Ad hominen is a poor substitute for debate.

I also suspect you haven't done any research on the relationship between the level of education of women in rural areas and the birth rate.

WHAT rural areas? Research in deepest Africa? Are you kidding?!? They are just making a scratch at education and it will take decades for that to have any impact whatsoever.

For today, however, they must worry about what they eat tonight. This forum thread's original post is about food, rdf -- the immediacy of food, particularly of carbohydrate-based cereals, i.e., the "staff of life".

As regards research on African education today, I suggest this paper (by an African, who should know), here. It describes how they are back-tracking away from wrote Western education (requiring memorization and abstraction) to basic training in terms of learning by participation (aka OJT).

This and micro-credit will do more for the moment, along with better treatment from the US and EU as regards their subsidization of cereal exports to world markets. To wit, African countries do not need low-cost imports as much as they need self-sufficiency that employs their people in farm work.

They can better use their hard-currency elsewhere ... to buy books, for instance, along with fertilizers, well-digging equipment, etc.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/business/worldbusiness/18focus.html?hp&pagewanted=print

May 18, 2008

Crop Research Is Neglected, and Third World Pays Price
By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/opinion/16fri3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

May 16, 2008

A Disgraceful Farm Bill

[Notice....]

[reason]

A couple of things stand out:
1. No talk about global warming. Is he a skeptic? He seems to want to increase total energy use.
2. Why should oil exporting countries bear a special burden here? Why does he expect them all to co-operate. The same effect could be acchieved if western countries imposed an IMPORT tax and distributed some of the revenue to poorer countries.
3. There is still no talk of strategic food reserves. Do people not understand that the planet could be struck by a meteorite or suffer a massive volcanic explosion and then some people would starve. We should see the current situation as a warning. It might be worse next time. We don't need to have enough food, we need to have more than enough food.

[Ayesha Lakhani]

The dramatic surge in food prices has plunged millions of poor people and many net food importing poor countries into a food crisis. Consequently, it has also put at risk their chances of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

[reason]

Lafayette...
I think RDF is on the right track re population. But I would add 2 extra policies
2. Reduce infant mortality with basic medicine
3. Introduce universal public pension schemes
That together with education (especially for women) have been responsible for the demographic transition everywhere. And all those things are doable also in relative poor countries (must be since they already carry the cost of high birth rates and family based aged care). Basically you need to increase the opportunity cost of high birth rates and reduce the perceived benefit. I dispute that the demographic transition is a product of growing wealth, it is a product of social democracy (that is how you can explain Saudi Arabia and co-incidently explain why the demographic transition is less dramatic in the US).

[JV]

Regarding reading and birthrate. Spengler at Asia Times writes about Iranian birthrate vs. reading.

Overpopulation is the real issue and a problem that gets little attention for the last several years. Now that China and India are expanding energy use and soaking up commodites it shows up again.

No issue from energy use to food consumption to clean water can ever be solved unless populations stabilize and reduce in the most impacted areas. The developed world is hitting its own limits on energy, food, land, water, etc and cannot give more and more and still maintain their own quality of life and make their own investments in the future. They have to make decisions with their own limits like biofuels vs oil, land for wind farms vs argriculture, parks vs housing, dams for energy vs water for wildlife you name it. Guilt of living well is no longer a motivation when the wealth starts to dry up. The next 4 or 5 decades will be interesting.

JV

[Food price rises and Crisis!!!!]

Food grain shortage may have many reasons but two main reasons we are not taking into consideration. They are excessive urban growth and pruning agricultural lands and agriculture as non profitable business any more.

Similar situation is now with entire world, demand is more and production is less due to imbalanced economic policies. More attention is given to urban economic growth than the rural research and development. A day will come when a slogan or will find ad “Buy one kg of rice and get a laptops free” as computers and other electronic products will be much cheaper. Economic growth has to be balanced considering social condition of the country. Banning exports of essential items is only temporary solution to overcome present situation but for future food grain shortage will further aggravate as
• Global warming - Nature earth’s own modifications and adjustments is the natural. Excessive human population, Excessive concrete buildings – industries (even excessive urbanization has role to warm our globe), carbon fuel based transportations heat up environment to reduce moisture in land results shortage and uncertain rain, river shrinkage, draught, shortage of water and so on.
• 25 years back there was more agricultural land than of today many of them converted to more and more housing and industrial lands; whereas population growing fast, feeding will become challenge to most countries even developed countries will not escape. Nature’s priority is water, food and then shelter. Economic and scientific growth need to be first based on human needs.
• Urban related economic growth thrusts agricultural land conversion to cities and building to accommodate urban population and industries. Over 20% of farm lands of developing countries have been converted to cities and buildings for the past decades and Over 50% of farmlands of villages (close to cities) got merged with cities.
• Non profitable food grain production (international organization and appropriate governments shall have to reconsider bring back agricultural subsidies). Also make agriculture more profitable by linking customer and farmers by way of direct procurement by large stores, and other agencies so mediators and brokers are kept away. There are many reasons for high cost of production of food grain but as food comes in highest priority WTO and the Governments need to reconsider bringing back subsidies or other incentives to farmers as is the only solution to make agriculture more profitable to farmers. Present situation is such that farmers get more profit selling their land to builders than farming.
• Escalation of essential food prices by “futures” trading (without add on value to product) helps hording so less and less mediators between producer and final customer. Present system of trading agricultural goods only helps middlemen from wholesalers to brokers. Their financial power helps them hold back stock to create artificial shortage.
• Irrigation and water shortage (In fact water crisis is there but in some states and countries water is excessive causing disaster or consumed by sea. If scientists of missiles or warplanes work on how river water reaches sea after consumed by entire world, would convert desert land to fertile land).
• Bio fuel is not alone the reason for food crisis as one day world will have to switch over to alternate source for fuel usage and bio fuel will be one of the substitutes. However, using human food as fuel is unjustified as food is the first priority than the fuel. Need to source other plants such as river or sea plants or from land plants not used for growing food grain.

[nahla mohamed salah]

i agree with you but i think its soooooo hard