Protect Your People
I’m all for global trade and anti-protectionism. But over the past two years (yes, my trip is now that long) I have come to the opinion that countries should always produce their own food – more than enough for their own people. In my mind, any country that cannot regularly provide for its people’s hunger is probably not a country anyone should want to live in. It would seem to me that the two main reasons for a federal government is to protect its borders and feed everyone and I believe producing enough food is a major factor for both of these to be successful. I used to be against agricultural subsidies and while I still have problems with some of them I am grateful that American farmers produce more than we can consume and we provide our abundance to the poorest countries around the world. The loss of prime farm land in America (especially California) as well as what I see in many other countries is very disconcerting. Worse is that many countries are failing their own people agriculture-wise, they have their priorities very mixed up and their mistakes seem to be aided by the food relief industry.
Two countries come to mind immediately when I think of those that are failing. First, Ethiopia is now getting a lot of attention because of a supposed drought and impending famine (I truly hate the media and was reminded again today of why – they printed an article about the dire situation in Ethiopia and how it is caused by a drought with nothing about the government policies and they printed a picture of a shriveled, starving baby – if you look closely, the photo is from 2005). I believe Ethiopia’s problem has nothing to do with drought – they are going through a dry year in part of their country. That part of the country in the south has all kinds of irrigated growing area that I have personally seen being used to grow cotton, tobacco and other non-edibles. Ethiopia is spending phenomenal amounts of money as compared to its real wealth on roads. Ethiopia has troops in Somalia and has an amazing amount of military and government spending lots of money. Ethiopia still has not addressed why they can’t grow more food through all these years of “drought” and famines. I would say they don’t address these issues because they like to spend it on other priorities, use famine to control their people and they love the amount of aid flowing into their country. This aid can be summoned anytime by reports of upcoming famine in a country we can all imagine as famine central with images from the 1970s and 1980s forever imprinted in our minds. Ethiopia needs to help itself by growing more than enough food for itself and in good years maybe they can send some to Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.
I was very troubled by Yemen for the same reasons. In Yemen, much of their highland farming plots are filled with a bush called khat that is a drug whose leaves are chewed by the majority of Yemeni people. The khat production uses valuable agriculture land as well as abundant amounts of precious water resources. I’ll write more about khat soon. Yemen is another borderline country as far as being very dry and there is a fine line between producing a good harvest and a failed one. Like Ethiopia, Yemen’s birthrate is out of control. It is a country that probably cannot support as many people as it currently has and is headed for disaster because its population is continuing to grow very quickly. I’m sorry, Yemen, but you do not have the means to provide adequately for more people than your land can support. Driving from the seaports to the inland areas are many trucks loaded with food aid such as wheat. While I am glad the Yemeni are not starving because of this aid I do wonder if this aid is allowing Yemen to get away with being stupid.
Should there not be some basic rules on national priorities having to be met before the rest of the world has to aid a nation? Of course, the problem with this line of thinking is that only normal people can get punished. I do think, however, that the world needs to start looking at this food aid business in a different light. Countries that are not attempting to live within their means or are not providing basic food requirements of their people due to misplaced priorities seem to be called out. The world is better off trying to change their ways rather than support them so that real drought and catastrophe situations can be addressed and overall food prices around the world will be stable.
Tags: World
vagabondrick
I so agree with you on this! Oh yes, after over 2 weeks I finally have access to a computer again and am catching up on your blogs.