Maybe the author should tell her colleagues in Greenpeace to stop destroying experimental crops which were being developed to feed developing countries. The millions of dollars that act of lunacy cost could have been used feed a large number of people.

Giving 'women finance to develop small farms' as a solution to the food crisis is surely some kind of oddball salvo in the gender wars rather than a real plan of action? Surely she cannot be serious? I note that the far left always enourage the return of Communist agrarian labour as the solution of the worlds food ills. I guess we can all plant potatoes in the field every day while we sing our revolutionary songs and praise Bob Brown.

The main pressure on food supply is the growth of China and India and their demand for protein. NOT imaginary weather events.

A great of example of the far left Crises creation machine in action.

Shows how one can make a good living these days with a strong grip in ideology and no grip on reality at all.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220546

Cheryl, this article & your well intentioned but illinformed response to it ARE the problem.

The starving Africans problem began when the loony left began meddling in it, ousting the old colonials, replacing them with corrupt communazi regimes.

http://www.rense.com/general32/americ.htm read it all, but pay particular attention to #11 & #43.

Note our own back yard where comrade Whitlam GAVE independence to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea & it has been a dysfunctional, foriegn aid dependent, failing state ever since.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220556

Peter Hume, correct,

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220558

Hasbeen, also correct, we give them money & corrupt leadership divert it to their swiss bank accounts, we give them food or any other material aid & corrupt leadership steal it then sell/swap it for money or guns, we somehow manage to provide food/water without it being stolen & they breed leading 10 times the number of starving Africans next drought.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220577
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220595

Grey & Jon J, also correct.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220643

Tectonic Shift, i sort of agree with this but please don't tell me you are another RED/green pretending to care?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12774#220644

Atman, spot on, BTW, China has also done more to destroy its food production with environmental rape than any other nation on earth.

When "mother nature/lady gaia" dams a river for you because it rained after all the trees were chopped down & half a mountain side falls into a valley you have to wonder about how "green left politics is working for them.

Of course there is a food crisis in Africa. All those women popping
out 6-8 babies, no family planning for hundreds of millions of them,
what to you expect?

The price of food is hardly high. Let me see, wheat at 250$
a tonne right now, with high oil and high fertiliser prices, drop
it much more and it won't be worth growing the stuff.

Most Australian familes could not afford to feed 6 children, so
why African women should be able to do so and you then wonder why
they cannot, is hardly rational.

Give those women the same family planning choices as 1st world women
have. Right now they don't have that choice. Most can't even afford
family planning.

Now thats a topic that the G 20 should be discussing, not how to
mine our agriculatural land for unsustainable farming, because women
keep popping out babies, many of them unwanted.

Yabby,
Spot on. Instead of the UN and NGOs organising food during famines, they should be organising family planning and contaception during the good years. It has been shown that education here can produce a dramatic reduction in birthrates, so this needs to be pushed.

I believe climate change is a natural and normal aspect of our enviroment and droughts will come and go. Improved medical services and over population has more to do with famines than any other aspect.

For those that believe in AGW, take note that a reduction in population will lower carbon emmissions. This seems never discussed.

Hi Formersnag.
I plead NO pretence... just realism.
Your Red/Green reference is misplaced too. My thoughts about that Party would make your hair curl !!

The thing we’re really starving for isn’t food so much as ... history.

The notion that small-scale subsistence farmers using so-called ‘organic’ methods and ‘natural’ (non-GM, non-hybrid) seed varieties can outperform high intensity farming isn’t just wrong, it’s lethal. Only the most blinkered ideologues could urge hungry people to take up a farming methodology which requires five times more land than modern methods. If you want to over-exploit ecosystems and ensure famine, that’s certainly a great way to go about it: require poor African nations to grow food using 17th century technology.

It’s true that small-scale farms in poor countries are struggling to feed their populations. That’s because small-scale, low-tech farming is inefficient, expensive, unreliable, and 100% certain to degrade soils. Modern farming techniques are sustainable, and low-cost -- just compare agriculture today with agriculture in 1950, 1850, 1050. Yes, food prices are rising, and the largest single price driver so far in the 21st century is subsidies for corn to support ethanol production. I think that’s what you call an ‘own goal’.

And yes, world population continues to increase ... but the RATE of increase has slowed dramatically since the 1960s — it’s expected to peak at around 9 billions by 2050, and fall thereafter. That’s a conservative estimate; the faster we develop modern farming techniques in Africa, Asia and South America, the sooner world population will stabilise, then decline. It’s not speculation: it’s already history in China, Pakistan, Mexico and India, and the transition has taken only a few decades. Population growth is already negative in developed countries, despite increased life expectancy; it’s the poor ones, without reliable access to plentiful, affordable food, where overpopulation and famine go hand-in-hand.

What’s driving down population growth? Modern high-intensity farming, which lifts poor subsistence-farmers into the cash economy. What’s the best way to address climate change? Use land efficiently, and reduce population growth. How? Look at history!