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66% of the world's cocao comes from africa. Massive amounts of coffee and tea. 80% of the world's "gum arabic" (aka Senegal Gum, or Acacia Gum), and quite a few other products.
Why are they not growing sustainance crops for their own consumption, and why is the U.S. importing this stuff from over there?
I've researched a lot of the products I eat. Many of them have african ingredients in them (that in all honesty I rather, were not) so I don't quite follow why there has to be starvation in africa. As well as slave labor, at least in the chocolate trade. (Isn't cocao originally an S. American plant?)
Something doesn't add up with what little I know about it at the moment.
Perhaps these 2 articles can help to explain it. I just read them for my food & culture class last semester. Simply put, the people that raise the crops would rather receive more money from countries like ours than less money (and feeding more) from countries like their own.
Many third world countries grow crops like corn just to feed the livestock that are raised and factory farmed on their land as well. Rainforests have been destroyed to clear ground to graze cattle to make beef. People are paid for that land, so people make money while others starve...
Perhaps these 2 articles can help to explain it. I just read them for my food & culture class last semester. Simply put, the people that raise the crops would rather receive more money from countries like ours than less money (and feeding more) from countries like their own.
africa does not have a food problem. mexico does not have a poverty problem. america does not have a labor problem. all three have a greed of the rich and powerful problem.
Oh Huckleberry. Your kidding right? Nobody does stuff like that just to get rich. Right? Everybody loves everybody else,right?
you are right it gets complicated. when you take your foot off somebody' neck you have had on the ground, as a rule they dont stand up and shake your hand.
In some African countries the government runs the farmers off and seizes the land, which means there is a shortage of skilled farmers. These governments shoot themselves in the foot.
africa does not have a food problem. mexico does not have a poverty problem. america does not have a labor problem. all three have a greed of the rich and powerful problem.
So in Zimbabwe, the government seizes the farms of the successful white minority, runs them off the land and redistributes the property. Food output falls 80% and a country that had plenty of food now sees its population starving.
There are any number of publications that go into length on many of the causes of Africa's food problems. In general, where land is held in private ownership, people are fed better than in countries with centrally planned economies.
Also, where western nations dump a lot of grain products in an effort to eleviate starvation, they end up destroying the market for locally produced grains which discourages local farmers from growing the crops.
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