I appreciate that the current food crisis has gained a lot of media coverage lately. Today, I want to clarify part of the nature of the current food crisis that I think some people may not realize.
We do not actually have a shortage of land, food or other resources. As I often stress on this blog, the world has more than enough food to feed everyone. The world has more than enough resources to provide food, clothes, clean water, shelter, education and healthcare to everyone. The problem is not a lack of resources such as land and food. The problem is the way our society distributes and uses those resources.
Whether we like it or not, we currently live in a capitalist society in which resources–including natural resources–go to the people willing and able to pay the most. The groups of people who want land and other resources for luxuries or bio-fuel production are willing and able to spend more for those resources than the people who need the resources for food and such.
Basically, I see two general methods of solving that problem.
Firstly, we need to find a way to alleviate and hopefully eradicate poverty so that all people have enough money to buy what they need by outbidding other people who want the resources for luxuries.
Secondly, we need to find a new and fairer way to distribute resources, namely natural resources such as land, water, oil and so forth. As I have said before, I believe we can end poverty by ensuring that all people have an equal right to natural resources. I believe most of the cost of products such as food come from the high cost of obtaining usage rights of the natural resources used in their production.
Poor people generally are not poor because they lack labor or the willingness to work hard to get what they need. What leaves them poor, despite their abundance of labor, is generally their lack of rights to the usage and control of natural resources. In our current society, money and capital represents that ownership or ability to own natural resources. So we either need to ensure that all people have enough money and capital to not be poor, or we need to change the fact that people need money and capital to get rights to the usage and control of natural resources. Of course, we can work on doing both.
What do you think? How would you explain the nature of the food crisis, and what solutions do you see? Answer those questions and post your comments about the above blog post at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.