The Associated Press reports that the World Food Program forsees a food shortage like we haven’t seen since WWII. With the intense competition for food, the World Bank is looking at options like Genetically Modified foods, food rations, as well as asking for a general reduction of the amount of food consumed by the global community.
The skyrocketing cost of food staples, stoked by rising fuel prices, unpredictable weather and demand from India and China, has already sparked sometimes violent protests across the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.
President Bush has released an urgent $100 Million and Britain promised another $59.6 Million in aid. Even so feeding programmes in Kenya and Cambodia have been scaled back.
And evolving diets among burgeoning middle classes in India and China will help double the demand for food- particularly grain intensive meat and dairy by 2030, the World Bank says.
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GM food scares me in the sense that we don’t know what it means for human health in the long run, nor can it be controlled. It’s not like we can stop the wind from cross pollination. That’s not to mention that third world farmers can’t compete with US markets because the GM seed costs more. As for the food crisis in general, my grandfather used to work on the railroad and said that entire cars full of food were dumped just to control the market price. My guess is that this type of practice still happens. Maybe if we stopped gorging, started sharing, and worried less about keeping shareholders happy, we could feed the world.
Oh, and then there’s the cost of war… But whatever, Bush. You keep messing with God’s food chain in the name of YOUR calling to the job of salvation. Right on.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this, but PBS’s Frontline and NOVA did a show on GM Foods called “Harvest of Fear.” Their website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/) has a Q&A called “Should we grow GM crops?” that leads you through key arguments in a flow chart style and you decide which is the better choice at every juncture. It’s an interesting excercise in educating yourself and drawing your own conclusion. I went through it twice a couple of years ago and made different choices just to see the outcome either way.
My last gripe…
Since the link above is from 2001, the following site has updated information on the dangers of GM foods: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall7.cfm.
It might also do some parents good to search for info on government irradiated beef being fed to children in elementary school lunch rooms – without written warning or consent from parents. In 2003, innocent children became the new guinea pigs. If radiation kills bacteria on meat (rather than having to clean up the meat packing industry’s sloppy production practices), what do they think will happen to humans afteryears of exposure??