In the US, 40 to 50 percent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten. (GlobalIssues.org)
This is a good counterpoint against GM food. In a few weeks the Swiss have to vote again on GM farming. One of the main pro-arguments used is that it would help feed the hungry. I think that is nonsense, we do not need more GM but better infrastructers so the hungry can be reached and more local farming. It is also nonsense shipping/flying the food around the world to rich consumers while the local people go hungry.
I view it like this: you've the necessary foods (like fruit, diary, grain or rice) and the extra foods, those which are not necessary to survive but which are nice to have.
Although I find the statistics horrifying and think it's outrageous that a quarter of the population is starving and another quarter is obese, I think that transporting the surplus of necessary foods to starving countries won't do much to help the basic problem that there's too little food produced. In fact, the people would start to rely on the flux of foods from other countries. I'd rather stimulate that the countries with starving populations become self-sustainable when it comes to necessary foods.
To solve the problem structurally, I propose exactly the same as you did: better infrastructure and local farming. I view that as the key solution, but not for the aim of transporting foods; I'd combine local farming with GM products. Too many African countries have made it an art to use the western countries as a financial milk-cow; I do not favour any type of action which would stimulate that behaviour.
Turning around on my own argument, I hate local farming as it will eradicate the last vestiges of the nomadic tribes. I know farming is necessary to feed the modern day population, but that will be the consequence. The Masai and all the others will die out as a people.
For me there are still to many question marks about GM. Just because there has not yet been any direct connection to sickness, does not mean that it does not cause problems, it just means the connection has not yet been found. Genectics is still a very young science and we still know way to little how it really works, though we do a know a lot more than 20 years ago.
BioVision has very interesting projects in Africa which show that there are other and healthier solutions.
Serious droughts: I agree that for natural disasters it won't be a cure. However, I'd argue that if more countries are self-sustainable the impact could likely be decreased and aid would not need to come from overseas.
I'll not argue that GM is the end-all and be-all solution; I consider it just another drop to tip the scale a little further to the positive side. However, the scares about GM are made larger than they in reality are; the tests before large-scale production are quite rigid. The patents, though, are a very annoying obstacle to actual implementation and right now do more harm than help.
There are immeasurable crooks and nannies to this solution, one of them that many of the current nomadic tribes historically used to call the shots and now are pushed more and more into an outcast position. Divides between tribes and clans are far from buried. Politicians (generally non-nomadic) abuse the nomadic tribes in their turn and there is a growing disconnect between the city-politicians and the tribes.
Actually, politics in Africa can be so depressing, I have my first hopes on commercial nature-reserves, which would abuse the "novelty" of nomadic tribes for a part, but would (hopefully) allow the majority of the tribe alone to their own lifestyle.
Then again, I always hustle words on purpose, so this could be the first sign I'm mentally disintegrating.
Well spotted.
