Even before India had to lift import quotas to enter the WTO in the late 1990s, it had huge surpluses of grain, wheat in particular. This is one of the nations that has the most hungry people on the planet, and it has grain surpluses that rot, mere kilometers away from starving people, grain you could deliver using a few tanks of gas. So even locally (say, the subcontinent), there is enough food. Every nation on this planet, except for a few very small ones, city-nations like Monaco, Luxembourg, the Vatican, etc, have the agricultural capacity to answer their own food needs (although not the variety, but that's another issue, and it's not relevant here). The technology exists. The problem is economic, not fucking geographic.
EVEN IF IT WAS GEOGRAPHIC AND PHYSICAL, I don't know if you've been reading the news, but there's that little thing called "globalization", which, while it has been marking human civilization since its earliest times, has been greatly increased in recent years. Note in particular the trade in goods between Asia and America, as we send back and forth the cheapest as well as the most expensive commodities. We (Canada as well as the US of A) are already sending boatloads of grain across the world (we sell wheat to China, for example), and sell it in these markets at cheaper prices than the local farmers do there. There are these things called boats, and they have capacities like "PanaMax" and "SuezMax", which are humongous quantities, and take a very low ratio of fuel-to-weight ratio to move around. I was talking about earlier civilizations; it is agriculture that gave rise to the first human empires, and the trade in crops along long distances. Agriculture, and trade in agricultural goods, is the oldest commercial activity that humans have engaged in.
The problem is economic. In an era where we can put a man on the moon, (although not in the deepest reaches of our own oceans) we have absolutely no problem moving grain from Uttar Pradesh to Bangladesh, or even from Edmonton to Jakarta, and it doesn't even cost that much.
Anyway, all that said, I see that you are a Torontonian, I hope we can meet some time; you're articulate even if not quite on the same spot as me.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-15 05:48 am (UTC)EVEN IF IT WAS GEOGRAPHIC AND PHYSICAL, I don't know if you've been reading the news, but there's that little thing called "globalization", which, while it has been marking human civilization since its earliest times, has been greatly increased in recent years. Note in particular the trade in goods between Asia and America, as we send back and forth the cheapest as well as the most expensive commodities. We (Canada as well as the US of A) are already sending boatloads of grain across the world (we sell wheat to China, for example), and sell it in these markets at cheaper prices than the local farmers do there. There are these things called boats, and they have capacities like "PanaMax" and "SuezMax", which are humongous quantities, and take a very low ratio of fuel-to-weight ratio to move around. I was talking about earlier civilizations; it is agriculture that gave rise to the first human empires, and the trade in crops along long distances. Agriculture, and trade in agricultural goods, is the oldest commercial activity that humans have engaged in.
The problem is economic. In an era where we can put a man on the moon, (although not in the deepest reaches of our own oceans) we have absolutely no problem moving grain from Uttar Pradesh to Bangladesh, or even from Edmonton to Jakarta, and it doesn't even cost that much.
Anyway, all that said, I see that you are a Torontonian, I hope we can meet some time; you're articulate even if not quite on the same spot as me.