In a recent speech Barak Obama foreshadowed the slashing of agricultural subsidies in the USA, especially to big corporate farmers. Not only would this go a good way to offsetting the cost of the stimulus package, he made it clear it had his full support for a host of other reasons. Lets hope he can take Congress with him.

On another thread on OLO not so long ago, someone described the situation in Rwanda where the people in an area of great fertility where they used to be entirely self sufficient in food now received international food aid as they were forced to grow export crops. As long as global capital allows, or forces, this sort of situation, the food problem can only get worse.

There is also the problem of overpopulation. Again, the new US administration (and ours) are supportive of giving women the ability to cantrol their own fertility, which can only be a good thing.

This is an aside.

Candide, I understand that Australia along with the USA had rules in place (thanks in this country to Brian Harradene) that prohibited government funding to charities that provided advice to women about abortion. One of Obama's first steps was to reverse that prohibition. I don't believe the Rudd government has yet summoned the courage to bite the bullet on that one. Do you know what the current situation is?

I don't think the agricultural subsidies in the US and the EU quite serve the same purpose although of course both distort the world market.

In the EU and particularly in France they are more about supporting the traditional rural lifestyle while in the US its about promoting bigger profits. I have some sympathy for the French position as I do for our own farmers who have seen the countryside depopulated and smaller farmers losing their livelihood because our governments have not seen fit to provide some sort of support for them.

There never was really a free-market. Globalisation and free-trade is about 1% of the world's richest and most powerful controlling the rest of the 99%. Free-trade, globalisation, reaganomics, Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics has been proven to be a failure.

We need to rediscover Karl Marx's brand of economic theory.

http://www.globalissues.org/video/728/lori-wallach-free-trade-how-free-is-it

The world should go back to managed(fair)trade and nation building.

90% of the consumer goods currently produced are not really required. If one really does a costing of a laptop (notebook) computer it would be like US$200 (per unit) for manufacturing plus US$1500 environmental costs.

*someone described the situation in Rwanda where the people in an area of great fertility where they used to be entirely self sufficient in food now received international food aid as they were forced to grow export crops*

Candide, I'd say that the situation in Rwanda is far more complex
then that. I've read various stuff about why genocide occured there
and one problem is ever rising numbers of people. So farming plots
became smaller and smaller, down to unsustainable levels.

I found this little gem the other day:

*Religious ideology also contributed to the country's deepening demographic problems. The majority of Rwanda's population were Catholic. Despite Rwanda's evident overpopulation, those in
the church and government hierarchy not only refused to promote birth control programs, they actively opposed them. Radical Catholic pro-life commandos raided pharmacies to destroy condoms with the approval of the Ministry of the Interior.*

Its on page 33 of this URL

http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdf

No wonder there is a food problem in the country.

This is because largely the markets for food are the least free of any markets worldwide.

Making them free would most likely reduce the price of food world wide.