Stuffed and Starved

Product Details

Author : Raj Patel
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780002008112
Number of Pages : 438
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 2008-02-14
Publisher : Harper Collins Canada

ASIN : 0002008114

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Customer Reviews

A Looming Global Food Crisis (2008-04-12)

Do you want to know why this world is presently in a serious fix as to supporting the future needs of its swelling population? Read Patel and you'll see that the growing inability of many nations to feed their people can be traced to the same Western greed and chicanery that is likely driving the present financial crisis on Wall Street. Put simply, Patel presents some fairly compelling evidence that shows that western nations have, over the years, seized the capacity of developing nations to feed themselves. This has all been in name of agribusiness, where large multi-national corporations expand into poorer countries to buy up farmland, put small farmers out of business, and control the price of the product by restricting its distribution. Shortages in vital food commodities are due in no small part to big corporate speculators, working through hedge funds, buying large future positions on things like wheat, rice and corn. Their control of the supply allows them to hold back in the interests of getting a higher price. To get to that point, the Cargills and ADM of this world entered a countries like Mexicoand Brazil on the pretense of some international food-aid program that amounts to free food in exchange for a market presence. Western nations such as the USA are infamous for dumping their food surpluses in developing countries, which has the undesirable effect of immediately creating a drop in domestic farm prices, leading to a collapse in the farm industry. Once this dependency on food-aid has been solidified, the big corporations move in as middle men ready to form their own distribution systems and force out any local competition. As of today, we have a dire situation forming in Southeast Asia where the average person cannot afford to buy a main staple like rice because it has tripled in price due to artificial shortages. Since governments like India are powerless to release food to a needy public because of their initial complicity with the corporations, mass starvation could likely occur. As for how to fight this growing problem of economic congestion where prices rise to unaffordable levels in response to curtailing of supply, Patel's answer is simple: form collectives and marketing boards to protect the price for the producer at the local level. The kind of leveraging that these two economic bodies could produce might be enough to restore a semblance of competition to the market so that local farmers could produce food that was affordable to local consumers. This is a book that raises all kinds of geopolitical concerns that can only be resolved if bigtime capitalism steps back from its efforts to effect world domination in the interests of Western greed.

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