Unfortunately, Industrial-Scale Agriculture is PART of what is KILLING The Living Planet Earth, which ultimately comes back upon us well-meaning Humans who sincerely want to "Feed The World" with our near-Miraculous Technologies of Chemical Fertilizers and Chemical Pesticides ...

May 29, 2012 -- 8:53PM, CharikIeia wrote:

May 29, 2012 -- 6:58PM, Roodog wrote:

If our agriculture fails who is going to feed the rest of the continent and the world?

As was pointed out several times before on this thread (didn't you read that??), producers in other nations will be much more capable to grow & sell(!) their own food once they are not priced out of the market by US monoculture produce any more.

There are several aspects to this.

Local  droughts (which can and will happen anyplace- at any time- climate change or not).

Long term droughts (or other impacts) of climate change.

Agricultural practices, agribusiness, monoculture.

And government action (or inaction).

In the ideal the world would have a rational food production system, with enough diversity to allow one region to pick up the slack in responding to regional droughts, and enough flexibility to encourage food production in different areas in response to long term climatic trends.  How to achieve this is good question.  Usually this is the sort of situation where free markets excel; but, when free markets lead to excessive concentration of economic power (aka agribusiness)  they tend to lead to shortages and higher prices in the name of profits  rather than the opposite (witness recent drug shortages).  But government intervention rarely tends to improve things either; free trade is being criticized here (probably because in this case free trade= agribusiness)  but protectionism is no answer either.  We need to be able to leverage world-wide food production to deal with local crises (which will always happen).   Plus, in many third world countries governments are ineffective (the world could have managed to easily feed people in Somalia or Sudan, had not local "government" or the lack thereof stood in the way). 

May 29, 2012 -- 11:27PM, Roodog wrote:

Companies like Montsanto are striving to establish an international monopoly on food. It is not unheard of that American companies would buy up farmland in other countries to control the food market.

Yes, that is sadly true, Roodog.

When these other nations nationalise the foreign "investments", however, also otherwise rational people cry "foul" and "commie" and "this goes against free trade"...

In Europe, more precisely Spain, there has been much outrage when Argentina nationalised its Repsol-owned oil fields (Repsol is the biggest Spanish crude oil company). The Argentinians were feeling that nothing much was happeining in terms of investment & development & exploitation of the oil fields, so they took it into their own hands again. Argentina needs jobs and income.

Who can blame them with a straight face?

It's a non-food example.
With arable land & food production, such "investments" are even more insidious.

May 31, 2012 -- 3:11AM, CharikIeia wrote:

May 29, 2012 -- 11:27PM, Roodog wrote:

Companies like Montsanto are striving to establish an international monopoly on food. It is not unheard of that American companies would buy up farmland in other countries to control the food market.

Yes, that is sadly true, Roodog.

When these other nations nationalise the foreign "investments", however, also otherwise rational people cry "foul" and "commie" and "this goes against free trade"...

In Europe, more precisely Spain, there has been much outrage when Argentina nationalised its Repsol-owned oil fields (Repsol is the biggest Spanish crude oil company). The Argentinians were feeling that nothing much was happeining in terms of investment & development & exploitation of the oil fields, so they took it into their own hands again. Argentina needs jobs and income.

Argentina acted well within the tradition of Spanish jurisprudence going back to the Middle Ages. "The Law of the Seven Parts" decreed that the Crown owned all mineral rights, be it gold, silver, coal or oil.

Who can blame them with a straight face?

It's a non-food example.
With arable land & food production, such "investments" are even more insidious.

This is a part of Globalism which leaves me ill at ease, the "New World Order" is headquartered in the First World and is for the benefit of the Developed World. The Third and Fourth World is merely a source of natural and human resources to be exploited and the chips are down, totally expendable. Coincidentally, the Developed World is mostly white and the Third and Fourth is not. The "herrenvolk" concept is alive and well.