Episode 460 Famine – Why and When?
Stephen Devereux studies famine. He has developed a scale for assessing the severity of food insecurity and has compared 70 recent historical cases of famine. Many of them are complex situations involving conflict, some actually caused by the political actions of states’ policies, as in Afghanistan now sanctions are maintained against the Taliban to pressure them to protect the rights of girls to education, though the effect is to violate another human right– the right to food. For the video, audio podcast, transcript and comment column: https://tosavetheworld.ca/episode-460-famine-why-and-when. After watching, post your own thoughts.
Guest:
Stephen Devereux
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At 41 minutes begins a theme that lays blame on the “underdeveloped” world – the famine that will now overtake the poor countries is the result of a slow rate of adoption of modern, petrochemical base, fossil fuel driven agriculture that is focused on the important, the essential grain crops (also called cash crops). But it’s the lack of infrastructure and the poverty that stands in the way of eliminating hunger – that’s the claim. Actually, communities that were food secure and food self-sufficient are being destroyed and these traditional, subsistence farmers with small farms are being pushed off the land and into city slums as western Agribusiness aggregates land for optimum mechanization. We know that this food system has weaponized food as an proven process of subjugation. It’s not about feeding the people, it’s about maintaining the power of the colonial powers and depleting the wealth and health of the oppressed people. Yes, western academics struggle to “make sense” of the global failure of the food system because they’re unable to reconcile to the truth that today’s agribusiness is an extension of the exploitive Plantation Economy of yesterday. The result is total confusion, because those who have created this system still retain authoritative positions do not speak truth to power. For a deeper understanding of what is going wrong and how to create real change have a look at “closing the hunger gap” https://pyrapod.com/closing-the-hunger-gap/