2013-01-10, 23:45 | Link #25701 |
Nyaaan~~
Join Date: Feb 2006
Age: 40
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@Gundamfan - Lulz, my point was simply: "Things will change based on the national consensus" -- It happened with abortion, slavery and women's rights. People will collectively ultimately decide what it is that they want. If they want guns they get guns. If they want butter, they get butter. That's right, guns & butter! [econ hattip!] People just need to stay informed. Period!
I'm also not American, I'm Canadian, and our government is pretty internationalist in many aspects of our lives and we tend to be okay with that here. That said, here's some "News (kind of)!" Navy spy Delisle's ex-wife recalls 'good guy' gone wrong http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/...th-estate.html Totally forgot about this story myself. Espionage! In .. Canada! Reminds me of the poor Canadian Admiral from Goldeye..
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2013-01-11, 00:03 | Link #25703 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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Farmers that don't make money, tend to have too much of one crop. that crop's price drops to next to nothing due to over supply and then the farmer can't afford to buy other things needed for the following season (he has food...at least until the crop goes bad, or the harvest becomes impossible).
After that you start not having farmers anymore. As they cannot survive as farmers (we they can survive in terms of being able to feed themselves (usually), but eventually the supply and demand scale tip the other way, and you have no farmers to keep up with demand....and you get real food shortages, or extremes in prices. Society wants stable prices for foods as much as possible. Thus not only if farming subsidized, but also imports and exports attempt to make sure most produce is avaliable in at least some quanity all year round at the same prices.
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2013-01-11, 00:13 | Link #25704 | |
Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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You know what they say about people resorting to name-calling...
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Obviously, didn't you know that the ideal world is where everyone is farming for their own food? |
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2013-01-11, 00:22 | Link #25705 |
Komrades of Kitamura Kou
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
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The problem here is that food is (or at least should be) a basic right as a necessity of life. What we're seeing here is that the supply will get controlled by very few individuals. It's not just the farms but agritech as well. In third world countries this is increasingly apparent, especially in uncontrolled free trade where product dumping is becoming a problem. Here in the Philippines it's becoming excessively cheap to buy imported rice due to lifting of trade restrictions, slowly killing the local industry. We're one of the worlds biggest rice importers, and we're primarily a rice agriculture nation. That's just stupid.
We seriously can't allow the food supply to be dictated by the supplier. There is so much demand, nay need, of food for starving populations across the globe.
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2013-01-11, 00:24 | Link #25706 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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The industrialization of food production brings efficiencies to food production just as Enclosure did centuries ago. A small scale farmer can't afford to make only a profit of 20,000k off his farm, but if that same plot was part of a larger industrialized farm, much lower margins can be sustained, due to lower labor requirements and economies of scale. If you want to pay for this antiquated form of agriculture, pay for it with your wallet. Me, I'll take whatever is cheapest and of sufficient quality, regardless of who produces it. Likewise, GMOs could also revolutionize agriculture, as we would be able to more precisely engineer better crops, rather then rely on the hit and miss method of plant breeding (Genetic modification and breeding are basically doing the same thing, the former simply has greater possibilities). |
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2013-01-11, 00:38 | Link #25708 | |
Komrades of Kitamura Kou
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
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You can call it subsistence farming, it most likely is, but there are still places living in such abject poverty that subsistence farming is what keeps them alive. Modernization can be either a bane or a boon depending who is in control and how much. Once again, if the supplier dictates the prices at ridiculous levels because of their control over the industry, then what? The industrialist can easily screw over the lowly farmer. Not to mention the unfairly bad rep that GMO agriculture is getting from many sectors.
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2013-01-11, 00:47 | Link #25709 | |||
Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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I certainly can't recall any human civilization where food is considered to be a right and provided free for all. Quote:
As for the Philippines, maybe you guys need to boost the efficiency of your local farms? Quote:
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2013-01-11, 00:53 | Link #25710 | ||||
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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Otherwise, I actually think we could do with reducing the amount of agriculture in Europe, we have precious little wilderness, it would be nice to turn over more land to nature. more efficient farming means we can do that without jeopardizing our food supply, which is something I think a lot of people lose sight of. Quote:
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It is true that biotechnology is concentrated in the hands of too few mega-corporations, and that has potentially monopolistic consequences, but getting into panic attacks about the terrors of genetic modification isn't going to help matters. If we want to counter "bad" GMOs, what we need is more research into "good" GMOs. Instead, by shutting down GM entirely, we just end out ceding the field to the megacorps, making matters worse. That, or we cut ourselves off from a potentially revolutionary opportunity for technological improvement(if we do as the EU did and ban GMOs entirely). Quote:
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2013-01-11, 01:05 | Link #25711 |
Komrades of Kitamura Kou
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
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Well one of the primary issues in the slow decay of local agriculture is poverty of course. People in the rural areas migrate to the congested cities looking for better opportunities when farming no longer puts, ironically, food on the table. They're being driven out by cheaper competition from, well, either cheaper imports or cheaper large-scale agriculture.
My point being is that efficient and high tech farming is not just in the realm of Megacorp. Local small scale farming can and will work as long as enough effort and favor is put into it. Centers like the International Rice Research Institute here in the Philippines proves it can work for everyone.
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2013-01-11, 01:18 | Link #25712 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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2013-01-11, 01:18 | Link #25713 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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There has also been worries of buying food products from what people consider "enemies". Poisoning of foodstuffs usually is considered. (The various news articles about Chinese foodstuffs being cheap due to added inorganic compounds that in the wrong amounts are poisonous or generally unhealthy...seems to happen alot in the pet food industry).
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2013-01-11, 01:23 | Link #25714 | |
Komrades of Kitamura Kou
Join Date: Jul 2004
Age: 39
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2013-01-11, 02:50 | Link #25715 | |
Kurumada's lost child
Join Date: Nov 2003
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You can have food be treated as health care or any other means in which food production is payed for by taxes. This doesn't have to be the only way. What matters is that the profit incentive stops being the #1 driver of food production. I would declare food an universal human right that can't be denied regardless of economic status. As things stand now food is nothing more than a commodity to the industry, it is not valued enough and it is wasted.
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2013-01-11, 03:06 | Link #25716 | |
NYAAAAHAAANNNNN~
Join Date: Nov 2007
Age: 35
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Then what would be a replacement driver of food production? Some religion? Government quotas or risk having an extra tax?
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2013-01-11, 03:29 | Link #25717 |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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Individuals have to be in charge of their own survival. If you do not take the steps necessary to support yourself, then why should everyone else have to pay for your laziness? Likewise, you do not have a basic right to other basic needs like shelter. If you do not have shelter the government doesn't owe you a house.
Now, for the events out of your control, there's disaster relief/ insurance and welfare. I don't see why more is necessary. And besides, under the current capitalist mode of agricultural production, we have seen greater gains in food production, and greater reductions in hunger, then in every era before it. In fact, in the last century, among the capitalist nations there were no major instances of mass deaths due to famine or hunger. In fact, all the major instances of famine took place in centrally planned countries. Fundamentally, the system is good. Everyone works independently with pricing as a coordinating tool. |
2013-01-11, 04:49 | Link #25718 | |
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Moderator
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Second, with that transparency we need reform. There is no need to pump animals with antibiotics constantly from farm to grinder. It's one of the reasons antibiotics are becoming less effective. There needs to be less use of artificial ingredients, as well as a large reduction in sodium and corn syrup. Third, better public education of the food system. The whole thing: from seed to store. People should know exactly how the system works. It's frightening how many people do not understand or value the things that keep them fed. For something so basic, people should know a lot more than they do. I'd say this about a lot of things - the more people know about how things work, the better off we all are. Fourth, we need to put more emphasis on efficiency. Use new technologies to help reduce waste in the entire chain. Put more emphasis on local/regional growers. There's no need to be importing a crop from another area of the country/world if it can be grown closer. These are just a few ideas. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, just improve it. Most importantly, the decision making process in the system can't be so tilted toward big companies and lobbies. A situation like Monsanto should never exist. I don't like the money system much, but there isn't any replacement for it yet. Until then, there's a lot of room for improvement with the already existing system, and we should work with that until something better comes along.
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2013-01-11, 05:43 | Link #25719 | |
NYAAAAHAAANNNNN~
Join Date: Nov 2007
Age: 35
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2013-01-11, 06:31 | Link #25720 | |
blinded by blood
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What if you aren't lazy? What if you're willing and able to work, but can't, because nobody will hire you? Do you simply die? Air, food, water, shelter should all be basic human rights. Deny any of those and you are effectively killing someone. I always wondered why we protect "basic human rights" like free speech, freedom of religion and such... but we don't protect freedom of staying alive.
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current affairs, discussion, international |
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