Overpopulation AND Overconsumption.

[pan]

Both.

[pan]

Immigranting to asteroids? Talk about your illegal aliens!

[Mark]

As the U.S. incites, sponsors, and occasionally directly commits genocide in Africa to steal resources that fat Americans can't live without, like cell phones and iPods, U.S. disinformation agents engage in tactics of distraction by blaming poverty on African overpopulation rather than on U.S. overconsumption.


Ben Affleck, Rwanda, and Corporate Sustained Catastrophe

Global poverty is not due to brown skinned people having babies, but due to white people continuing to rape and plunder the planet to feed our overconsumption habits.

There may indeed be a theoretical correlation between birth rates and poverty, but NOT in places where we have forced people off their land so that we could mine it, drill for oil, or turn it into rubber and cocoa plantations. In such places poverty is due to the fact that we stole their land, not due to their birth rates. To ignore an actual correlation, i.e., that when we steal their resources, people become poor, and focus solely on a theoretical correlation, i.e., that if we weren't killing them so that we can continue to steal their resources, they might have high birth rates that might lead to poverty, is racism pure and simple.

[pan]

Ethiopia: population, famine and fate

A quarter-century after a million Ethiopians died in the great hunger of 1984-85, the country is heading into another famine. The spring rains failed entirely, and the summer rains were three weeks late. But why is famine is stalking Ethiopia again?

The Ethiopian government is authoritarian, but it isn’t incompetent. It gives fertilizer to farmers and teaches best practices. By the late 90s the country was self-sufficient in food in good years, and the government had created a strategic food reserve for the bad years.

So why are we back here again? Infant deaths are already over two per 10,000 per day in Somali, the worst-hit region of Ethiopia. (Four per day counts as full-scale famine.) Country-wide, 20 percent of the population already depends on the dwindling flow of foreign food aid, and it will get worse for many months yet. What have the Ethiopians done wrong?

The real answer (which everybody carefully avoids) is that they have had too many babies. Ethiopia’s population at the time of the last famine was 40 million. Twenty-five years later, it is 80 million. You can do everything else right – give your farmers new tools and skills, fight erosion, create food reserves – and if you don’t control the population, you are just spitting into the wind.

It is so obvious that this should be the start of every conversation about the country. Even if the coming famine in Ethiopia kills a million people, the population will keep growing. So the next famine, ten or fifteen years from now, will hit a country of a hundred million people, trying to make a living from farming on land where only 40 million faced starvation in the 1980s. It is going to get much uglier in Ethiopia.

Yet it’s practically taboo to say that. The whole question of population, instead of being central to the debate about development, about food, about climate change, has been put on ice. The reason, I think, is that the rich countries are secretly embarrassed, and the poor countries are deeply resentful.

more

[pan]

A country is overpopulated if it can't meet its own food needs.

The U.S. is the largest exporter of food in the world. The U.K. imports most of its food. By a strictly agricultural viewpoint, the U.S. is underpopulated and the U.K. is overpopulated. And this has nothing to do with which country has more black or brown babies.

[Mark]

You got a source for that unfounded assumption, Pan?

Here's what the USDA has to say:

U.S. Food Import Patterns, 1998 to 2007

According to your definition and the USDA report, we're overpopulated. Maybe the USDA is lying and your source has the real facts? I'm always open to facts, Pan. Name your source.

We're the largest exporter of genetically modified seeds, but the food grown from those seeds kills the laboratory rats, so many countries have banned GMOs and don't consider them to be food.

[pan]

Find a source that shows a higher level of imports than exports and you might have a point.

Until then sing Johnny One-Note out loud.

[Mark]

We're the world's biggest arms exporter. And we're also the world's largest debtor nation. Big agra is still exporting what it calls foodstuffs, but most have very little nutritional value and some are actually toxic.

GMOs aren't food. And we're not exporting anything that we send to other countries to refine, prepare, package, and ship back so that corporations can sell it to us.

We're exporting carcinogenic crap, like high fructose corn syrup made from genetically modified corn, and stuff that has no nutritional value like Coca Cola, and we're importing healthy foods we steal at gunpoint from poor countries. And the only way we can import the food that we need to import is to borrow money to do it because we can't force other countries to grow our food without a huge military presence, and that costs money. Money we have to borrow because we can't export enough to earn it.

There are four primary reasons for the "buy local" movement. One is that transporting food contributes to global warming. The second is that when you buy local, you know that the food wasn't produced by forcing poor people in Africa and Latin America off their land and onto corporate plantations to grow the food we import. The third is because many people prefer healthy foods to corporate poisons. And the fourth is because politically aware people know that our economy isn't sustainable and want to be prepared for the collapse.

You're right that we still have a slightly higher level of food exports than imports (if you count GMO soy and GMO corn as food), but that's disappearing fast:

And the only way we can export food is by pushing through free trade agreements that allow us to dump food in other countries below cost to force their farmers out of business, so that they'll have to buy from us--and then we raise the prices. Think Wal-Mart's predatory business practices, but on a much larger scale.

I have mentioned many political and economic problems. You and BO keep insisting that the problem is overpopulation. If you'd add even a second note to your repertoire, you might not look so foolish accusing me of what you're doing.

[pan]

You are confusing production of food - which the U.S. does in excess to the needs of its population - with the manipulation of markets, which the U.S. also does.

As my father, who was a professor in Agricultural Sciences told me - the reason why people starve is not from the inability to produce enough food in America and other "breadbasket" states to feed themselves and their neighbors, its the economics of distribution.

But.....again you are citing information that doesn't really deal with your initial definition of overpopulation based upon the ability to sustain the population in one's own territory. America can easily feed its own population. Whether or not the economics of the situation diverts the arable acreage towards the cultivation of crops (such as soybeans for Japan or corn for ethanol) that aren't utilized to feed the populace doesn't change the capability.

Ethiopia and the U.K, on the other hand, do not have the capacity to self-sustain their own populace. Thus they are overpopulated.

[Mark]

Here's and article from AgWeek about how we still manage to export "food."

NAFTA harming Mexico corn industry
Larry Matlack,Agweek
Published: 05/04/2009

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The news that surrounded President Obama’s recent visit to Mexico regarding Mexican corn farmers may have come as a surprise to some, but not to those who have followed the issue since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Several interviews were broadcast on U.S. television news services that highlighted the fact that Mexican farmers cannot compete with subsidized corn imported from the U.S. These farmers were forced to move into makeshift dwellings in the shadows of Mexico City. As advocates for family farmers, in the U.S. and abroad, the American Agriculture Movement has worked to make this catastrophe known and has worked with Congress in an attempt to correct the injustice for many years.

NAFTA eliminated Mexican import restrictions on U.S. corn. Soon after the ratification of NAFTA, Freedom to Farm eliminated the floor price mechanism for U.S. corn. Not long after that, Washington policymakers decided not to segregate or label genetically modified corn and we lost our corn export markets to the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The net result was a large volume of cheap U.S. corn dumped onto the Mexican farmers’ markets. This, in turn, displaced thousands, possibly millions, of Mexican farmers, causing many to illegally cross into the United States to find work to support their families.

Supporting corn prices at the market with a fair loan rate would be a much better option than our current system of paying subsidies that allowed cheap corn to steal the livelihoods of Mexican farmers and gave the American taxpayer a bill for corn subsidies and illegal immigration. Even if we do not care about the monetary cost, the moral shame is ours to bear.

This is just another example of the indirect and unintended consequences of U.S. farm and trade policy. But more important, this atrocity is another example of the reason all family farmers need and deserve a fair price for the fruits of their labor, not taxpayer subsidies.

We may not be able to overturn NAFTA or put the GMO genie back into the bottle, but we can re-establish fair prices for U.S. famers with better farm policy and, in turn, help the farmers of Mexico and the world.

Editor’s Note: Matlack is president of the American Agriculture Movement.
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Mexico was not only self-sufficient in growing corn, but it had surpluses and was a corn exporting country.

Our predatory practices forced millions of small farmers off their land (we seem to have done the same thing to small farmers here in the U.S. also) and turned Mexico into a food-importing country. They were self-sufficient. But we weren't, so we turned a corn exporting country into a corn importing country by forcing them into an unfair treaty. And then you brag about how we're still exporting food. Yes, we're still exporting some, but only at gunpoint or the economic equivalent. More powerful countries refuse to buy our GMOs, so we have to force them on less powerful countries, without regard to whether or not they are food self-sufficient.

Mexico didn't need or want to import our GMO corn. But nobody else wanted it either, so we pushed through an unfair treaty so that we could export corn to a country that didn't need it or want it. It did cost us a lot of money, but it wasn't easy. U.S. taxpayers not only had to subsidize the corn, but also to shoulder the burden of the economic consequences. And that's not counting the corporate donations to lawmakers to pass treaties that advantaged large corporations at the expense of small farmers in both Mexico and the U.S. To be more precise about it, "we," the United States aren't exporting corn, a private corporation named Monsanto is exporting corn at U.S. taxpayer expense.

Many people like myself won't buy from big box stores or supermarket chains and won't buy processed foods because we don't want to poison ourselves with GMO "foods" and we prefer to support small local farmers instead of big predatory corporations. San Diego has at least two cooperative food stores that won't carry GMOs and focus on organic locally grown foods, and more than forty thriving farmers' markets with more opening all the time. And we're a conservative Navy town, not some freaky California "fruit & nuts" area. We haven't had a Democrat on our County Board of Supervisors in at least twenty years.

[Mark]

Here's the rest of the article:

Suppose that Ethiopia had been the first country to industrialise. Suppose some mechanical genius in Tigray invented the world’s first steam engine in 1710. The first railways were spreading across the country by the 1830s, and at the same time Ethiopian entrepreneurs and imperialists spread all over Africa. By the end of the 19th century, they controlled half of Europe too.

Never mind the improbabilities. The point is that an Ethiopia with such a history would easily be rich enough to support 80 million people now – and if it could not grow enough food for them all, it would just import it. Just like Britain (where the industrial revolution actually started) imports food. Money makes everything easy.

In 1710, when Thomas Newcomen devised the first practical steam engine in Devonshire, the population of Britain was just 7 million. It is now 61 million, but they do not live in fear of famine. In fact, they eat very well, even though they currently import over a third of their food. They got in first, so although they never worried in the slightest about population growth, they got away with it.

Ethiopia has more than four times the land surface of Britain. The rain is less reliable, but a rich Ethiopia would have no trouble feeding its people. The problem is that it got the population growth without the wealth. Stopping the population growth now would be very hard, but otherwise famine will be a permanent resident in another twenty years.

The problem is well understood. The population of the rich countries has grown about tenfold since the earliest days of the industrial revolution, but for the first half of that period it grew quite slowly. Many babies died, and there were no cures for most epidemic diseases. Later the death rate dropped, but by then, with people feeling more secure in their lives, the birth rate was dropping too.

Whereas in most of the poor countries the population hardly grew at all until the start of the 20th century. But once the population did start to grow, thanks to basic public health measures that cut the death rate, it grew faster than it ever did in the rich countries.

Unfortunately, economies don’t grow that fast, so these countries never achieved the level of comfort and security where most people will start to reduce their family size spontaneously. At the current rate of growth, Ethiopia’s population will double again, to 160 million people, in just 32 years.

You’re thinking: that will never happen. Famine will become normal in Ethiopia well before that. No combination of wise domestic policies, and no amount of foreign aid, can stop it. And you are right.

What applies to Ethiopia applies to many other African countries, including some that do not currently have famines. Uganda, for example, had five million people at independence in 1960. It now has 32 million, and at the current growth rate it will have 130 million by 2050. Uganda is only the size of Oregon (New Zealand, Ecuador, Romania, Laos).

History is unfair. Conversations between those who got lucky and those left holding the other end of the stick are awkward. But we cannot go on ignoring the elephant in the room. We have to start talking about population again.
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Now, instead of jumping to conclusions because the article happens to agree with your unfounded racist beliefs, let's take a closer look at what it is passing off as reasoned argument:

"....if it could not grow enough food for them all, it would just import it. Just like Britain (where the industrial revolution actually started) imports food. Money makes everything easy."

Just import it from where? Mars? Alpha Centauri? Some country which happens to be totally uninhabited but has lots of arable soil and water for irrigation? Money makes it easy because it buys lots of weapons and pays lots of soldiers, covert action teams, and economic hitmen. It enables a wealthy country (one that has already killed off or subjugated the inhabitants of other nations in order to use their lands to feed the imperialist country's own otherwise unsupportable population), to bribe the leaders of other nations to give their people's land to the imperialist, or to overthrow or assassinate them if they won't be bribed. Easy? Read Blum's book, Killing Hope, and see why we have to spend 57% of our budget on our military so that we can force starving people to sell us the food that we need to import.

A country that has to import its food is not capable of feeding its people. Other countries only give up their land to feed imperialists when we kill those who won't.

England cannot feed its people and has to import food. The United States cannot feed its people and has to import food. But imperialist countries have lots of money and that makes it easy to conquer or subjugate other countries and force them to grow the food we need to import. Then if those subjugated countries can't feed their own people, we say it is because their population is too large, not because they don't have the guns and money to import food the way we do.

Does Ethiopia have a high infant mortality rate of over two per 10,000? Here's what our Centers for Disease Ciontrol say about infant mortality in the U.S.: "In 1984, infant mortality for blacks was 18.4 deaths/1,000 births; this was approximately twice that for whites, which was 9.4 deaths/1,000 births." But according to Wikipedia, the United Nations and our own CIA have a different figure: "In the United States, infant mortality is 630 per 100,000 live births or 6.3 per 1000 live births." In case you're not good with decimal points, that's 63 per 10,000. And that when we have highly developed technology and lots of money to easily import food.

Since the article comes from a Yemeni website, I googled to see if I could find some history between Yemen and Ethiopia, and this is what I fiound:

http://www.yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1148&p=culture&a=1

Yemeni-Ethiopian relations date back to ancient times....In times of crisis, Yemen provided a safe haven for Ethiopian refugees and Ethiopia in turn accepted Yemeni immigrants during times of political upheaval....During [fascist] Italy’s 1936 invasion of Ethiopia, the Italians brought in numerous Yemenis to work as builders. Yemenis became rich through trade during this time....Yemeni people’s departure from Ethiopia is attributable to two specific incidents, the first of which occurred in 1969 when a bomb was discovered on an Ethiopian plane, which had been placed there by Ethiopian liberation forces in Syria. Arab communities were blamed for the bomb, which led to a wave of anti-Arab sentiment....The second incident was the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, which implemented a program of nationalization that seized private assets and companies, turning them into state-owned enterprises. Because of this, Yemenis were forced to exit the country, leaving their possessions to the Ethiopian regime.

Well, whaddya know? It seems that there's a history here and it includes racism and fascism. I guess Italy was sufficiently technologically advanced and had enough money that it was easy for Italy to import stuff from Ethiopia, and to use Yemenis to dominate the country for them.

The problem isn't fascist countries importing food because they don't have sustainable lifestyles, the problem is overpopulation in the countries where they wish to commit genocide so that they can use those countries to grow the food they need to import.

It all depends on your point of view. If you think genocide is progress and stealing other people's land so that you can force them to grow the food you need to import is a good thing, particularly if those people have darker skin, then the problem is brown people having babies. If you don't happen to be fascist, then the problem is countries that can't feed their populations committing genocide so that they can "easily" (by merely killing millions of innocent people) import their food.

Maybe those poor countries need to buy more fertilizers from Monsanto? Won't that solve everything? If nothing else it will make Monsanto's shareholders happy. Shall we send Ethiopia some economic hitmen to loan them some easy money on the condition that they spend it all to buy Monsanto's fertilizers? How dare they nationalize their own country. That's against U.S. business interests. That's against Yemeni business interests. That's against the business interests of every country that can't feed its own population or supply its own minerals and has to import food and minerals from Africa. But the problem isn't that WE can't feed our populations, or that OUR infant mortality rates are too high, the problem is brown people having babies.

The United States IMPORTS coffee, food, and grains from Ethiopia. Why would we be importing food from an overpopulated country where people are starving? Because we want to help them? If we wanted to help them, wouldn't we be SENDING them food? Oh, right, we're so technologically advanced that we have to import our food. But it's easy for us because we have so much money. We just buy it from starving people and if they don't want to sell it, we kill them. Easy peasy.

C'mon, Pan, parrot some more racist tripe for us. Don't analyze it, research it, or think about it, just parrot it. BO will back you up by helping you call me names if I disagree.

[pan]

You, like the Zionists who proclaim all criticism of Israel as antisemitism in order to shut off all contrary discussion are attempting to win your points through bullying. You ascribe various beliefs and ideas to me which I have not made in order to set up a straw man that you can knock down.

You have defined one's territory as the land that one's peoples can sustain life while rejecting my more global outlook yet, when faced with a specific instance of a country overpopulating based upon the realities of its agricultural resources you label my argument racist (ignoring the fact that I have labeled the U.K. as overpopulated) and then insist that we look at Ethiopia from a global point of view. This is only one of several points where your logic is conveniently inconsistent.

[Mark]

Your "more global outlook" is called globalization, otherwise known as neoliberalism or imperialism.

And it is racist and fascist. But it is very consistent.

Kind of funny, though. If there was a gang armed with assault weapons in your neighborhood who held you up and stole your wallet any time they saw you, I don't think you'd say that they have "a more global outlook," I think you'd say they were stealing from you. I guess it is all in the point of view.