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People aren't hungry because there isn't enough food. Food corporations throw out a ton of food.
Capitalism is what is starving people
World hunger is not just about food waste but also unequal distribution on an international scale. When China develops a rice variety that grows in salty marshes or Brazil develops a soy variety that grows in savannah conditions, you give countries in the Global South the opportunity to grow food not only locally but much more productively. At that point the problem becomes a matter of solving the underlying issues with international financing, which is one of the things Michael Hudson is talking about.
This rice variety seems like a godsend even in a liberal capitalist hole like Brazil.
At that point the problem becomes a matter of solving the underlying issues with international financing, which is one of the things Michael Hudson is talking about.
But that IS the capitalism problem, no?
The point was that new technologies aren't irrelevant because capitalism. Food waste and the shackles of imperialist finance affect different countries disproportionately. But the latter was always cushioned by the fact that, historically, it was straight up impossible for non temperate countries to become food sufficient. At least not in an industrial context. Every advancement in that direction for the past 60 years have created pathways that undermined the basis of imperialist finance.
Yes, if you're American you have an entire temperate continent to exploit. In these conditions it all boils down to redistribution, wether within or outside of capitalist hegemony. But if you've been Indian, Brazilian, Chinese or South African ever since the Green Revolution what you needed was new crops. Productive enough to outcompete cheap exports from the imperial core. That is why countries like Angola became interested in the Brazilian soy, and countries like Indonesia became interested in the Chinese marshy rice. This new rice that the video talks about is revolutionary for pretty much everyone.
I mean, I don't disagree that it's awesome and that waste isn't the real problem, but...
Productive enough to outcompete cheap exports from the imperial core.
The cheap exports are a result of international finance fucking over the labor in the producing countries who are locked into their shitty loans by corrupt puppets of Western imperialism. Those cheap exports are just the international trade equivalent of Loss Leaders. Making a cheaper competitor isn't going to stop the coups or the NGOs or the right wing death squads. The prohibitive problem isn't the cost, it's the barrel of the gun pointed at the third world holding them hostage to the system. If anything, I'd say this is more likely to help those states who are already exiled from the western community like DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela.
I see, that makes a lot of sense
I know, that's just the title of the video.
I agree, but you need the potato to have a potato famine (read: British occupation exporting food like they did in India and other countries while the people starve)