Feed the world, or feed success?

If we want to feed the world we have to set ourselves the goal of feeding the world.  It might seem obvious, but we seem to be setting ourselves other goals, such as individual national success and glory, money for shareholders... and missing the point.

It's no good going to big companies to ask them to feed the world.  Their job is to make money, feed the shareholders and survive by beating the world.  It's no good going to the governments of self-interested 'rich' countries;  their job is increasingly to make sure their company competes successfully on the world market or be destroyed by it.  Big agroindustrial compaines have the goal of amassing personal, corporate or national wealth to the detriment of others, and feeding the world always comes second to feeding their success.

Whether we realise it or not, this money-making mentality applied to food for life is to the detriment of others:  put simply, if we all want to live like Americans, we need 7 planets, or even Europeans we need 3 planets. (Paul Aries)  At the moment some of us are over fed at the cost of most of us who are poor and too many of us who starve.  We can't go on like this.

If we want to feed the world, we should not confuse this either with the simplistic goal of  'producing more' which doesn't in practice feed the world.

In a nutshell and a soundbite, if we want to feed the world our thinking has to be based on NEED and not GREED.

It is wonderful how resourceful we humans are if we are freed from greed and free to concentrate on need, and how bountiful the earth is, if we can work together.  Each country, each region within that country needs to take responsibility for feeding itself, individual farmers need the possibility, information and practical help to interpret the general principles on their farms: the  reward are:   more resistance to pests and diseases, to weather extremes, higher yield, and no dependence on expensive products.   These solutions can be brought into being by dipping into the bountiful resource of human thought:  human thought guided by science, compassion and insight, and importantly, unimpeded by corporate or economic competition. Agroecology is an example of this.   There's no shortage of human resourcefulness and natural resources with this approach.

If we think there is a global need, too great and horrifying to contemplate, 9 billion of us soon, in one big mass, and not enough food to go round, and if we think we need to turn to a global company or government to solve this need we are going to make a very big mistake.  We are going to make the earth suffer and humanity is going to suffer.  Global companies and governments who take false ideas and turn them to profit are not going to feed the world;  they are going to poison the world, they are going to starve the world, and if we let it happen, they are going to kill the world.  (If you have any doubts about this, please see two films, The World According to Monstanto and Our Daily Poison both by Marie-Monique Robin).

We need to turn away from production/profit thinking, that is corporate thinking, it is taking us nowhere in terms of the banking economy and it is falsely applied to the challenge of feeding the world.   The goal, remember,  is not to produce, over produce, produce for profit and force your produce on others or force up prices, but to enable the world, in all its myriad countries and regions,  to feed itself.    Poverty, ignorance, bad economic practice and misguided food production are important causes of world hunger, not a simple 'lack of food' which can never be rectified by some big company using chemicals and coercion to produce 'more'.

The earth gives us life.  The successful relationship of farmer with the earth which gives us life and is more sophisticated, clever and beautiful than ever narrow corporate thinking can be. It is healthy and strong.  It is long term and it is the future.

AGROECOLOGY;  Scientific facts and inspiration for feeding the world;  

Here is an approach based on need not greed, informed by facts not profit figures, inspired by the generosity and versatility of nature, instead of seeing her as the enemy.   The general principles of agroecology provide an infinite number of possible solutions waiting to be worked out for an area near you.  .www.agroecology.org/

Please see the film The Harvests of the Future by Marie Monique Robin, for the most beautiful, sensible and understandable presentation of true solutions for feeding the world.