Wasting Enough Rice to Feed 184 Million Is Habit Only Rats Love (Outrage warning!)

[marmar]

:argh:



Wasting Enough Rice to Feed 184 Million Is Habit Only Rats Love
By Jason Gale and Luzi Ann Javier


Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Inside his northern Philippines granary, Marlon Ventura stirs gray zinc phosphide into a bowl of boiled rice, making a garlicky, toxic meal for rats.

He puts the bowl on a dirt floor dotted with grain spilled from vermin-gnawed sacks. Each year, rats steal or foul almost three-quarters of a metric ton (1,654 pounds) of his rice. The cost -- 12,240 pesos ($250) -- equals 7.8 percent of his farm’s net income.

“I’m frustrated because we’ve not got any support from the government,” says Ventura, 28, who farms with his three brothers and spends 900 pesos a month on rat bait. “When you have very little money, every grain you can save matters.”

The world is wasting enough rice this year to feed 184 million people, about a fifth of those who are undernourished, based on estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome. The amount lost between harvest and consumers globally totals at least 48 million tons, says Concepcion Calpe, a senior economist with the FAO.

Rats aren’t the only species responsible -- humans also play a role. Lulled by low food prices since the 1970s, donor nations and lenders halved aid to agriculture in developing countries, the World Bank says. Corrupt leaders and bureaucrats siphoned off much of what did arrive, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. As a result, grain storage and processing remain primitive in many developing countries, which have the greatest losses and highest rates of hunger.

1 Billion Hungry

The lack of investment in shoring up the grain- delivery chain was among man-made causes of the food crisis of 2008. Other ingredients in this recipe for famine included trade policies that pushed developing nations into global markets and speculators who drove prices higher by doubling bets on grain.

Now, after price increases in three of the past four years, the number suffering from chronic hunger is approaching 1 billion of the world’s 6.8 billion people, the FAO says. At the same time, the UN estimates that at least 15 percent of all staple crops, including rice, corn and soybeans, will be consumed by pests, spoiled by water leaks or otherwise go to waste after harvest this year. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=adH2EpXXWSRo&refer=home

[MercutioATC]

1. Waste is a fact of life on a farm.

Hell, you're harvesting plants from fields. How can you expect not to have some critters mixed in?

[JanMichael]

4. ummm wouldn't some cats help out here?

why not pick up some cats from the pound and toss them in?

[MercutioATC]

5. Somewhat, but rats are tenacious.

I grew up on a farm. We had a couple of dozen cats, but when we cleared out the last tiers of hay from the outbuildings scores of rats would scatter. The dogs once killed 23 of them in the space of 20 minutes.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. starving the poor is no accident. It is a plan.

More and more people are wising up to that reality.

[TahitiNut]

3. A "free market" reaches a supply/demand equilibrium when some are priced OUT of the market.

The level of 'demand' priced out of the market isn't enough to attract new supplies but is enough to set the highest optimal SELLER's price. This is an inherent 'feature' of "free market economics." When the price goes too high, more suppliers are created. The competition must make it unprofitable for SOME suppliers as the price goes down, causing them to stop supplying - and resulting in price stabilization where the supply is just low enough to starve some of the demand.

So, when food, clothing, and shelter are provided through a 'pure' free market, some will go hungry, some will go naked, and some will go homeless. Ain't that grand?

:puke: