Dr. Mercola May 17 2008 52,868 views
The first global food crisis since World War II is upon us, and already threatening 20 million of the world’s poorest children. Possible solutions to the crisis range from ration cards and genetically modified foods to eliminating “pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap” supermarkets.The price of rice has more than doubled in the last five weeks alone, and it’s estimated that food prices have risen by 83 percent in three years.People in the West, including the United States, may need to eat less meat and consume or waste less food, analysts say. Experts have also called for a reexamination into the production of biofuels, which is said to destroy forests and take up land available to grow crops for food.
Unrest over the food crisis has led to deaths in Cameroon and Haiti. It has cost Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job, and caused hungry textile workers to battle with police in Bangladesh.
It is rapidly becoming clear that massive changes in our food supply system are desperately needed. In the recent past, we have seen terrifying problems with production, procession, and supply -- ranging from tainted food, to the food shortages detailed in the article, which are leading to riots and starvation.
In addition to the measures proposed above, one of the most commonly proposed solutions to the food crisis is the genetic modification of crops. That is, in fact, exactly the opposite of what should be done. While the supposed motive behind GM food is an altruistic one -- to alleviate hunger, poverty and malnutrition worldwide -- the reality is that GM crops are intended to swell corporate coffers more than anything else.
What’s more all that tinkering with Mother Nature comes at a heavy price: The creation of Frankenstein-like crop combinations that can harm your health.
In spite of what you have likely heard, a large shift to organic agriculture -- which by definition is non-GM -- could not only protect and improve the environment, but help end world hunger too. A recent Danish study cited recent models of an organically grown, global food supply to show that a more environmentally friendly approach to agriculture is capable of producing enough food for the world's current population.
What prevents many farmers from making the move to organic is that crop yields could initially drop as much as 50 percent in the very beginning, before evening out over time. However, that problem may be mitigated somewhat, because farmers wouldn't need to dole out precious money for toxic pesticides that can create so many devastating health problems.
While you’re waiting for the rest of the world to catch up, take advantage of local sources as often as you can for your organic foods. And you can avoid GM foods by:
Is Britain's cover-up of its 1845-1850 holocaust in Ireland the most successful Big Lie in all of history?
Here in Australia one is not normally permitted to take home their uneaten portion from a restaurant, and NEVER from an all-you-can eat!
I try to remember a press seal bag when I do dine out so that our feline and canine dependants get a bonus at their meal. No matter how nice the meal was I would feel very guilty about eating the leftovers myself.
One of our local restaurants is doing just that - you can get a half-sized portion for half price!
Excellent point! They need to get rid of the "ALL you can eat" gluttony establishments and start doing what Fridays (the restaurants) is catching on to-smaller portions at smaller prices. I hate the buffets and such, I think they are a prime example of why foreign visitors think we are such slobs!
Thank you Islander for the reminder to not be wasteful with our food.
I do wish to point out that again our government makes it all worse. For instance, when I was a teenager I used to go to our local grocery store and ask for the produce they were throwing away to feed to my chickens. Today the store will not allow any of this produce to be fed to our pets! So, were wasting milions of pounds of produce. Now I must purchase local feed with "interesting" ingredients to my chickens. What a shame.
I have never seen a restaurant that won't let me take leftover portions home (except for wine), and I always do. And I always seem to to have something left over, except when I am doing long distance cycling trips, in which case the portions are about right.
Our school cafeteria is all you can eat for $5.10 (at lunch). I try to watch my portions and eat a sensible amount. But the students tend to waste a lot of food, as well as eating a lot of buregers and pizza, rather than the healthier entrees and salads.
My husband and I almost always split one dish when we go out to eat. It works and we are not obese because of this.
I am shocked by those of you who are outraged at the suggestion that Americans may need to eat less meat. While Mercola rightly states that meat is much healthier than grains, the fact of the matter is that large portions of the Third World have had only grains for their substinance for a very very long time. THEY LIVE ON THE BRINK OF STARVATION ALL THE TIME. A small price fluctuation is enough for force the death of millions of children because there is simply not enough food for them. Those of you who are disgusted becasue you are being told you might have to eat less meat are completely ignoring the peril of hundreds of millions of people! Echoes of the Fench Revolution abound, with the monarchy telling people to "eat cake" if they have no bread.
This food shortage is real and it is very serious. But Americans will not really feel the effects of it. We never really do. Americans won't watch their kids die. Americans won't abandon their homes and travel miles by foot across raging deserts in hope of something better, only to reach a refugee camp that is too overcrowded to accept them.
Until the people of the United States choose not to live with massive waste and overconsumption, the rest of the world is condemned to suffer and die. Someone said we need a leader who cares. If the people really cared, they would elect a leader who did as well.
Thank you! Finally a comment that makes sense. It seems everyone has been ignoring the part about eating less meat. You said it so well, there is no need for me to add anything :)
You might start feeling it! At our local auction barn, they shoot calves every weekend-no one wants to buy them as corn costs too much. (I raise grassfed animals; most don't). How do you think my not eating meat will help those in the 3rd world? Should I try to mail them a sheep? Most 3rd worlders are able to keep hens-therefore NOT subsisting only on grains, unless forced to have them killed by bird-flu police. Look at www.westonaprice.org articles on vegan ecological disaster.
the_natural_way,
This comment of yours...
"Until the people of the United States choose not to live with massive waste and overconsumption, the rest of the world is condemned to suffer and die."
...is quite frankly the scariest thing I've ever read on this blog - possibly anywhere. And I'm amazed no one else said anything about it.
So, you're saying that the United States is responsible for the ENTIRE WORLD? That anything and everything that's going wrong in the world is our fault?
Preposterous!
But it does go to show just how brainwashed many of us in this country have become - primarily due to our ugly history of nation/empire building overseas (which Ron Paul clearly and concisely lays out) - that we would automatically assume that "we" are both responsible for the ills of the world while simultaneously being the saviors of the world.
Here's the deal. I'm 48 and during my ENTIRE lifetime (and for who knows how long before that) people have been starving in Africa.
Not because of the US government - because of individual African country's governments.
I'm NOT saying we shouldn't care. I AM saying it's absolutely, positively NOT our fault.
The late comedian Sam Kennison was known for a skit he did in reference to the starvation problems in Africa. He would bend down, scoop up and then let spill an imaginary handful of sand and scream "Do you know what this is? It's sand! NOTHING GROWS IN SAND!! Why don't you get some U-haul trucks and move to where food does grow?!!!"
Hilarious - and obvious.
Think about it, the ONLY places on the entire planet where people are and have been starving for hundreds if not thousands of years are the arid, desert regions where water - and plants - are scarce.
I don't know about you, but if my family had been starving for generations, I would make it my life's mission to move them to a place where things grow in abundance.
Why live your entire life as an ongoing crap-shoot?...
Russ thank you for pointing out the truth.
We Americans have been brainwashed into feeling guilty for our way of life. A way of life our forefathers fought and died for.
A way of life many of us have worked hard and died for.
The people in Africa are starving because their RICH elitist leaders steal from them and allow the slaughter and death to continue.
Now they are fighting over religions and dirt.
This is NOT our fault. We (Americans) have poured billions of dollars into their countries to help, yet the results stay the same. Hard to help the starving masses when the fat rich leaders are too busy stealing the aid/money and funneling it into their own bank accounts.
Yes, we waste too much. And with the increase in our cost of living, decrease in real wages and removal of middle class that will soon change.
Anyone who thinks we can add nearly 100 million people to our earth with no need to increase food is living in a world that doesn't exist.
Good luck to us all.
EQ, its all about the money that is the subsidy paid to farmers not to plant land to keep the price of grains skyhigh and the big increase in the price of corn used to make fuel instead of food. It all run by BIG politics.
I would point out to lively, that the Irish potato famine was caused by potato blight 150 years ago, and no-one can do anything about it now. But what we all can do is stop waste - food, fuel, help the world global warming situation - greenland icecap is about to melt, raising sea levels by 3 feet, causing strange weather patterns, storms, floods, droughts.
I wonder exactly what they're implying by the statement "may need to eat less meat" ?
Trying to push a grain based diet on us? Hmmm
Not me. Every cow on earth could disappear and I'll still have meat. I know it offends some people, but I can kill 2 or 3 deer during hunting season and have more meat in my deep freeze than I could wish for throughout the year. Wild venison: hormone free, antibiotic free, "raised" on an all-natural diet, great omega source ... and tasty!
And soon I plan to buy a few organic raised chickens for my own egg source. And I don't live out in the country on some farm, just a humble house in the suburbs. Just check ordinances before getting chickens if you want to go that route. There may be a restriction or limit to how many you can keep, how to keep them, etc.
"may need to eat less meat"? Did you know that bush had a labratory site moved from a contained secure building (I think in New York)to the Kansas mainland? what do they do there? Experiment with disease and bio weapons. Like foot and mouth disease which if let loose by "accident" would pretty much wipe out the cattle all across the country.
Now why would anyone do this? Jobs for Kansas? I seriously doubt that. Logic would say -he would not want to wipe out all of the cattle because the big meat producers would raise hell, but many nefarious things have been done in order to achieve an end goal.
The fact is the public like you and me unless someone is higher up in the food chain will never truly know why things are done. Is it Peak Oil? Bio fuels? Depleted topsoil? Over population? sure, we don't need so many people, however, more could eat if things were done very differently. A lot of it is I think policies by the WTO and the World Bank in the form of their "structural adjustment" policy toward third world countries.Books like Naomi Klein's "Shock doctrine" and John Perkin's "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" explain a lot. So does Monsanto's policies of terminator seeds and suing farmers for genetic drift of their "patent" seeds.
One can not patent nature or God, but they sure have done it according to mans laws. Thank our government for that. Lobbyists, greed payoffs, and job security in the form of blind selfish self interest. Most of this *** is just pure evil.