End Of Cheap Food?

Once again the Farming Programme covered this [05;45 GMT, 6/3/2008], and expert view is that 10% of New Farming Land will have to be cultivated by 2030, even after allowing for optimisation of the existing farm land. This is a global view.

The trouble is that the New Land will be at best Marginal [ie. only useful when the economics allow for a fairly intensive method to force prduction from sub-optmal land fertility and weather conditions] which rather suggests that the Rain Forest is already in the sights of the Politicians simply to sustain the grouth in the human population. It serves the capitalist vision of how to keep developement going, and it involves ever growing economic activity and this requires an ever rowing human population to provide the cheap labour to facilitate low cost production.

I shall be dead by the time mass starvation hits [unless the human population grouth is reversed] but there is no way I would bequeath any offspring that inheritance! The rich nations will survive [and eat, even if they cannot produce all their own food], and the poor will all too freqnently starve, but the result will be War as once a nation has nothing to loose then War, however devastating, becomes a valid option ...

Being a part of a wealthy society will be no guarantee that devastation will not have its effect ...

George

How it works!!!

Auction with nations of world attending.

How much am i bid for this bushell of corn?

Somalia $7.00

US of A $100.00

Sold to the corpulent gentleman at the back.

Somalia: But we have poverty in our country and need the food. The Americans do not need the food.

USA: Bit i want it and i can afford it.

Simple and puerile analogy but essentially how it works.

regards david

quote:

Too late to kill off Bush though - that would have been the best option 7 years ago!!

That's a bit harsh - I thought Aerial was an excellent record.

domfjbrown.

you need to see the imax film "beavers" we aren't the only ones who are raping the planet. i guess the first step would be to shut your system down when not listening to it.

I always do that. Away for more than eight hours ...

Well I had to turn he machinery off. I brough the speakers with me!

Is the M20 a road or a car park? Kent polic did not seeem to know that the transformation had taken place!

George

The ultimate solution is one which dare not speak its name: A vast reduction in the human population.

Roll on, bird flu, AIDS, malaria...

That might be a bit drastic, how about just easier access to free contraception and moving state financial support and tax benefits from people who have children to people who live in larger households (regardless of marital/family status) as they are more efficient. The move from people living in families to living alone is supposed to have drastically increased energy and food wastage.

Dear All,

How about an easier one.

The Jeremy Clarkson ideology of a few years ago before he got to 40.

He proposed that we should shuffle off this mortal coil at about 60 as he thought with his tobacco habit he would be a dribbler by then.

Or even lower as suggested by a few of the 70's movies.

Seriously increasing numbers of very frail elderly will bankrupt our societies as they are not allowed to die.

So instead of killing the young and unborn kill the old.

Im 50 this year so Clarkson's ideology is looking less attractive to me.

regards David

I think it started to look less attractive to him too, he quit very reluctantly! My father has always been really annoyed by the nonsense that anti-smoking groups spout smokers costing the state a fortune, and he's not even a smoker. There was a study done which reckoned that smoking makes the British treasury around 12bn a year through direct taxation, taxation of the industry and the savings to the NHS, benefits and pensions from smokers dying earlier. Perhaps we should be rolling back the anti-smoking propaganda!!!

Quite!

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:
I did not believe that you were advocating literally culling the population.

Phew Well, that's a start then...

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:
If you choose not to reproduce in order not to pass on your syndrome I think that is very noble of you, not to mention a hard decision to make. However, unless someone is not of sound mind I do not see how anyone but themselves has the right to make that decision for them. I would agree with your view on voluntary euthanasia on the same grounds, if someone is of sound mind no-one has the right to force them to continue living. However, it would be wrong to expect someone to help you unless they agree with your decision and are comfortable with it.

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:
I pity you that you consider your own life so worthless that you resent your birth mother for not terminating you, but I think that you are not the rule.

Don't get me wrong - I don't regret being alive or anything (I'd have topped myself years ago if I did feel that way!), and I'm happy to be around - just a tad annoyed that I could have been here as someone who can drive, fly planes, not look "strange", etc. As I said, visible disabilities can be a real PITA.

...all that said, if I was "normal" I'd not know some really good people from my blind school, so it's swings and roundabouts there.

That doesn't alter the way I feel about my birth mother though. Maybe one day I'll get to meet her (with an open mind!) and be proven wrong?

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:
I have two adopted cousins, one with Down's Syndrome, one with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone could think they should never have been born. They are two of the happiest and kindest people I know, and for all that they have been a huge amount of work for my aunt and uncle they love them utterly. I also had a friend at University who had a myriad of problems as a result of Spina Bifida. She died on her 23rd birthday. She once told me her mother had been advised by the Doctor to have a termination, but did not, she was glad that she hadn't. She only lived 23 years, and not all of them in a great degree of comfort. Yet I cannot understand how anyone could have considered denying her those 23 years, or for that matter denying her friends the pleasure of knowing her.

This raises that whole question again though - the person with the disability might be really sorted, but if they never existed in the first place, no-one'd ever know. I'm simply stating simple facts. It probably sounds like I'm advocating "they shouldn't be born", but it's meant in the best way possible (IF that's possible!). Some of my best friends wouldn't be here if the parents had had terminations due to disabilities, but then they'd never have been here so I'd never have known.

...if you don't believe in GM, then the only way to stop having a kid with disabilities is to not have it period. Obviously there are many many exceptional people with disabilities e.g. Stephen Hawking, but then there are many who can't even communicate...

It's tricky - anything I say in this arena can be misconstrued. I don't intend to come across as a monster, but I probably do.

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:I still regard your views as immoral, although I perhaps understand how you have come to hold them better.

All this said, disabled people are a drop in the ocean percentage-wise; there are far too many humans (and beavers!) period.

I think that the problem is that people are just rampantly reproducing. Whether it's someone's right or not, the fact remains that the earth CANNOT sustain uncontrolled population growth. Harsh measures need to be taken sooner rather than later.

Perhaps the 1-child-per-family rule IS a bit harsh; what other alternatives can you suggest? Starship Troopers' idea of having to become a "citizen" to be allowed to reproduce sounds tempting - one way of stopping people on the dole reproducing to get bigger council houses and free handouts. Don't tell me it doesn't happen - I have lots of evidence from my own eyes and others' that it's going on all over Exeter and Exmouth for starters. What'll happen to those kids while the parents are out getting beered up in the pubs? That's our "future" out there - scarey.