
What Causes Hunger? - DanBC
http://www.wfp.org/stories/what-causes-hunger
======
kephra
I'm missing some points:

\- Land grabs: Big investors buy agriculture land to produce cash crops for
export, e.g soy beans to feed pigs.

\- Colonial past: Most land in 3rd world countries is owned by a few rich
people. E.g. Namibia was a hunger country before 1990, but is now one of the
biggest meat exporters after a successful land reform.

\- Frankenfood: Monsanto and other big seed companies destroying the ability
of farmers to grow their own seeds.

\- Food laws: One of the first things Bremer did after invasion of Iraq was to
install US food laws, basically forbidding people to sell traditional food on
the market. Forcing them to buy hybrid seeds.

~~~
maestro8
Could you expand on how "Frankenfood" is causing hunger? From what I've read
from the farmers that use Monsanto seed, they claim that their crops' yields
are more predictable. This claim is backed by recent research:
[http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/do-gmo-
crops...](http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/do-gmo-crops-have-
lower-yields)

~~~
kephra
e.g.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto+india+suicide](https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto+india+suicide)

The base problem is: Once your neighbor starts to use Monanto and round up,
the ground water and soil is poisoned and you need to grow resistant crops
also. Using Frankenfood crops means that you can no longer grow your own
seeds. You have to buy the expensive seeds, the expensive herbicides, and you
end up in debt and poverty.

You can also no longer do classical crop rotation, once you start poisoning
your field with roundup. The result is a monoculture that calls for even more
fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides.

This is not limited to Frankenfood, but also to hybrid plants. So we come back
to food laws, who only allow to sell crops of certain strains. Those strains
that are sold by big seed companies.

------
crusso
Sorry to say it, but that list doesn't include the most obvious cause of
hunger.

_People who reproduce when they don't have a reasonable expectation of feeding
their offspring._

It seems like a whole class of possible solutions to the problem of hunger are
ignored with such a tunnel vision approach to the problem.

~~~
DanBC
Most people have children with the expectation of being able to feed them, and
then things change.

You claim it's the most obvious cause of hunger, but do you have anything to
support that claim?

~~~
crusso
_Most people have children with the expectation of being able to feed them_

See already you're off base. Someone's individual expectation is not at all
necessarily a "reasonable expectation". There are lots of gamblers in Vegas
who expect to win big tonight... doesn't mean their expectations are
reasonable.

 _but do you have anything to support that claim_

What, like statistical evidence? No. I don't have statistical evidence that my
car is parked outside either, but I'll still take a chance on it by walking to
the spot where I left it earlier.

~~~
011011100
"See already you're off base. Someone's individual expectation is not at all
necessarily a "reasonable expectation". There are lots of gamblers in Vegas
who expect to win big tonight... doesn't mean their expectations are
reasonable."

How should people make decisions if they can't trust their own judgment?
You're going to one extreme and saying "lots of people are unreasonable". Ok,
great. Lots of people are also very reasonable.

"See already you're off base."

That's just a fancy way of starting off the conversation by saying "you're
wrong". No, he probably just doesn't agree with _you_. You should stop trying
to frame everything in this objective manner. It's actually really obnoxious.

~~~
crusso
_That 's just a fancy way of starting off the conversation by saying "you're
wrong"_

Not pointing out when someone is demonstrably wrong in a discussion is as
useless and futile as pretending to want to solve poverty and hunger but not
addressing the core issue.

Discussing topics like this on the Internet is already fairly useless. No
sense in making it worse with a bunch of disingenuous and logically incorrect
validation of opinions.

~~~
DanBC
> demonstrably wrong

Your inability to demonstrate it has been noted.

~~~
crusso
Your insistence that this is even a discussion about statistics and proof or
based on an article that isn't almost purely an opinion piece without
statistics or proof is noted.

~~~
DanBC
Hey, I'm giving you the opportunity to change my mind. I'm listening to you,
and asking you to provide information that will change my mind.

You haven't done so.

That leads me to think that your first comment was a knee-jerk opinion with
nothing to support it, and that you're continuing to defend that position
because you "feel" it's correct, even though it could well be wrong.

Your weird insistence that it's right, even though you're unable to provide
any evidence to support it, is odd.

I freely accept that the article I submitted is opinion - but it's informed
opinion from people who work in this field. The article has links to other
organisations who've published research on hunger, and the website for WFP
contains a lot of their published research.

So, I'm faced with a multi-national multi-government agency with a lot of
published research and many years of expertise saying one thing. And I have
some random Internet commenter saying something else, and getting defensive
when asked to supply any kind of citation for their claims.

At the moment I'm dismissing what you say.

But, like I said, I'm open to persuasion.

~~~
crusso
_So, I 'm faced with a multi-national multi-government agency with a lot of
published research_

Riiiiight... like that means anything. Should it mean something that
healthcare.gov is backed by the biggest government in the world yet is a piece
of crap that many developers on HN could have done better on in their spare
time over the last few years?

Should it mean something that these multi-national multi-government agencies
have been talking about and spending huge amounts of money on "hunger" for
many many decades and haven't made any progress? At what point does their
extraordinary lack of success dissuade you from being such a big fan? My guess
is never.

 _At the moment I 'm dismissing what you say._ _But, like I said, I 'm open to
persuasion._

I'm sure you tell yourself that, but your credulity of a report because it's
"multi-government" tells me that you're a believer in the mechanisms of the
State regardless of common sense, their abject failures, and information
contrary to that ideology.

If you were open to persuasion you'd be tremendously critical of the weak
article this thread is based upon - regardless of whether or not you buy into
my point of view.

------
blubberblase
Everyone who is interested in this subject I recommend the book(s) from Jean
Ziegler. He is a former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

------
memracom
This article spends a lot of time blaming things that cannot be changed. There
is only one thing that causes hunger; not enough food. It doesn't matter if
America has so much food that millions suffer from obesity. Somewhere else,
where it costs too much to send food from America, there are people with not
enough food, therefore they are hungry.

And as we should all know, organisms under stress, breed. Therefore, anywhere
that people are hungry, the population will grow faster than places where
there is too much food. No matter how much food you give to these poor people,
they will grow their population to once again blow the limit of the capacity
of their corner of the world to supple them with enough food.

Whose fault is that? Part of the blaim lies with enlightened rich countries
who sent so much health care to these deprived areas that their death rate
could no longer maintain any kind of equilibrium. And some of the fault is
with rich countries who sent luxuries that these poor people could not afford.
And some of the fault is elsewhere and neither you nor I will be able to
figure it out.

Best thing to do is to simply ignore this stuff. You cannot help and history
shows that you are likely to just make things worse. If you really want to
help then focus on yourself, your life and your community. Build a sustainable
local lifestyle for yourself and show the poor deprived starving people that
it can be done.

------
mullingitover
ctrl+f 'overpopulation' 0 results.

Sure, let's just completely ignore the elephant in the room.

~~~
crusso
As you roll back the calendar, when in human history has lower population
meant less per-capita hunger in the world?

~~~
mullingitover
Allow me to correct myself: s/overpopulation/high birth rates/g

Look at a map showing the countries with the highest birth rates, and overlay
it with a map showing the countries with the highest rates of hunger. You
won't find a lot of difference between the two.

~~~
jacalata
You're making a pretty classic correlation/causation error here. I'm pretty
sure that high child mortality and low economic prospects (e.g; conditions
where many people are hungry) are considered to _cause_ high birthrates, as
the parents attempt to maximise their chances of having some offspring to look
after them in their old age.

~~~
mullingitover
The cause of the hunger is the simple problem of too many mouths to feed. The
cause of too many mouths to feed is that infant mortality drops precipitously
with the introduction of modern medicine, while family planning is a foreign
concept or worse, actively demonized by the very missionaries who bring the
aforementioned modern medicine.

