Mary Hendrickson wrote:
> In my response to criticizing ADM and others for "feeding the world"
> Steve wrote:
>
> > How can I continue farming and not make a profit?
> >
> > Steve Groff
> >
>
> Let me clarify my original message. Of course farming has to be
> economically viable. I find it astounding however that ADM should tout
> their slogan of feeding the world when "the world" is plainly not who
> they are trying to feed. They are trying to feed those who have money
> to buy their products so what happens is that much food gets produced in
> the have-not nations of the world to be consumed in the have nations of
> the world. It's also been shown that much of the increase in yields
> we've experienced in this century has had the ironic effect of making
> more people hungry by driving them out of subsistence agricultures and
> into cash crops. Clearly, as we've discussed before on this list,
> hunger is more a function of political, social and economic context
> rather than strictly a production problem.
>
> However, feeding hungry people is not something we've addressed very
> well in the sustainable agriculture movement in Canada and the US. It's
> not because we don't want to. Sustainable farmers work hard and need to
> be paid justly for their efforts. Sometimes this makes this wholesome
> food unaffordable to limited resource families, however. Meanwhile,
> large agribusinesses are dumping surpluses, overruns, unasethically
> packaged food and the like into our system of food banks and pantries so
> that emergency food sources have to rely on industrialized agriculture
> rather than sustainable agriculture for food for the hungry. One way
> that many groups are trying to address these issues is to help people
> again try to feed themselves from small plots in both urban and rural
> areas. On the whole, though, the critique of sustainable agriculture,
> or alternative food systems, as mainly for the middle class remains
> somewhat valid. I don't have good answers but would like to see we in
> the sustainable agriculture movement work in this area as well.
>
> Mary
>
> --
> Mary Hendrickson, Ph.D.
> Network Coordinator
> Food Circles Networking Project
> University of Missouri Outreach and Extension
> Department of Rural Sociology
> Columbia, MO 65211
>
> Tele: 573-882-7463
> Fax: 573-882-1473
>
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