More on Oil, Food, and Hunger
"Opinion"05/12/2008
Paul Munnis
I’ve been doing more thinking about oil, food, and world hunger, and I want to share those thoughts with you.
Global climate change is a bigger problem to world food production than what some surplus corn tuned into ethanol is. In fact it can cause unexpected famine to happen. We are getting a glimpse of that now with a cold spring season and a wet planting season that can combine to prevent germination. Batting global climate change is in the interest of the whole human race and it directly affects our bellies.
While it is true that climate change impacts food supply on a spot basis, we don’t want it to hurt our spot because we could starve to death. Nobody else wants it to hit their spot either.
We have a strategic oil reserve in America to guard against oil starvation and it looks like we should establish a strategic food reserve to guard against unexpected famine. When food is privatized then the private interests don’t want a strategic food reserve. They want to see a huge price run-up so they can buy low and sell high and get rich. However it’s in our common interest to guard against famine and so a strategic food reserve is needed. This has not been a problem in the past because we did so much overproduction that we had huge surpluses that acted as a strategic reserve. But now that we are converting the surplus grain to ethanol we might want to establish a formal, publicly owned, government controlled, strategic food reserve.
This is not a new idea and the Pharaohs of old did it way back in early biblical days. We should not forget the lessons that they taught us. Some say we have a strategic food reserve but I ask if that is so then why is it that we are alarmed about taking surplus grain and converting it to ethanol? A strategic food reserve protects us against hunger whenever there is famine. We either have that strategic reserve or we don’t. If we have it then we can stop fretting about converting surplus grain to ethanol. If we don’t have a strategic food reserve then we should get one.
When I was thinking about the way in which the people of Israel use drip irrigation to grow food in the dessert it also struck me that fertilizers can be incorporated to make a rich water drip thus fertilizing the crops in a low cost, low budget manner even as they are being irrigated. This overcomes the limitations that we have been reporting of poor quality dirt that is causing poor crop production in much of the world.
I remember that when I was with Rotary International that one of the programs they had that is so effective is where they drill, install, and maintain wells for villages and for farmers in destitute countries. They have the right idea and maybe our foreign aid policy should consist of a two pronged program, one of feeding the hungry in an emergency situation, the other of drilling wells, providing high yield seed, showing farmers how to do drip irrigation, providing the materials for that, and providing water soluble food fertilizer to apply through the irrigation equipment. That will feed the hungry today and tomorrow if the hungry can control the governments that contrive to cause starvation in the first place.
Just as we talk about a strategic reserve for oil and food maybe we also need a strategic emergency fund as a cash reserve to draw on in times of disaster. This seems to belong at the UN level and could consist of credits issued on national banks to make a contribution in time of food and hunger crisis. The UN would redeem the credits and use it to fund their world food program on the basis of need.
Do we need an ethanol reserve? That is a new thought for me but I'm thinking that some sort of reserve against this fuel stretcher is needed so that supplies are not interrupted.
The more I think about these problems the more I wonder if anyone else is. Maybe I’m naïve but I see solutions for most the problems except those caused by governments. People need to rise up against oppressive and war monger governments that are causing them to starve to death. They have nothing to lose for if they don’t then they are going to starve to death.
A little earth stewardship can go a long way. Fighting global warming is not a luxury but a necessity.