*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.*

You know, you can all keep sticking band-aids on the correlated problems we are all drowning in or see the big picture and reduce!

Its takes a long time, but please try and use your imagination cause de-evolution has all-ready started. " we are going off our blue-printed time line so extinction is inevitable, for us and many other living things.

We are with western society at full peril of our over estimating, and now we have a world too full of sick people. Nature has always dictated the health of a species by keeping its members in check hence the survival of the fittest.

Human over-population reduction and the various signs that we all see quite clearly is the only way I can see to take the heat off this planet, so to speak. I would like to see the worlds people to wake up and learn that sustainability is the system that works.

19 century thinking will not work with this many people! as for free markets greed is involved not the availability of food. I would like to see the world stop trade or slow it down a bit, and concentrate on whats wrong on the home front. 15 billion people for Australia would be nice.

The governments of the world are starting to loosing control, and you know what they tried to fix similar problems with Don't you! That's right! WAR>

Our whole history is full of tails like the one countries growth and conquer, and what makes you think that this time is not going to happen again?

All the signs are here!

Get ready for roll-a-coaster ride.

EVO

The evidence is against Mr Wolfenden. Food security comes from diversity of supply, as noted by a previous commenter. Freer markets deliver more goods per input. The subsidies in US, Europe and Japan are the complete opposite of free markets. The food riots were, interestingly, mainly to do with the least-traded crops like rice. The more traded a commodity, the more secure its provision.

"the promises of more and cheaper foods that would come with free trade have ... brought ... under-priced imports."

That is, the promise of cheaper food has brought cheaper food! LOL

Mr Wolfenden also conflates the issue of food security and job security for producers - they are not the same thing. He needs a refresher course on free trade:
http://jarrahjob.net/?p=3

I have to admit, I thought this was a very odd article. In fact as Shadow Minister has mentioned, food markets are some of the least free in the world. Try getting rice into Japan.

Yabby is correct, if subsidies were removed from the equation, then supply and demand would dominate. Unfortunately, food prices would go up to better reflect the cost of production, but produces would respond to real needs rather than Government subsidies. The proximate cause of the food riots last year was two things: drought in many producing countries and biofuels mania in the EU and US.

Fatfingers, you have hit the nail firmly on the head. Wolfenden is complaining that modern agricultural systems are creating cheaper food and wants that to change. That might be OK for him, but I rather suspect that poor people in other parts of the world might see the result differently.

I have been told that in our world, sufficient food is produced to supply the world's population four times over. The actual problem is greed, politics and all those thing that prevent the food from getting to the hungriest and neediest. Lets address those issues please!