Tuesday 15 November 2011

What population/food crisis are you referring to?

Facts are stubborn things. Therefore they are often ignored.

One contemporary meme circulating the Western world is that the world cannot produce enough food to support its growing population.

The facts are that the UK throws out uneaten food in the year to the value of approximately double the entire government expenditure of the government of Kenya; or two-thirds of the entire Kenyan economy. On a ball-park estimation of how much money the average Kenyan spends on food, the money spent on thrown-away food in the UK in one year would feed the entire Kenyan population for nearly two. Note that I'm not proposing that the money is simply over to the African. Money without work except where work is impossible (e.g. elderly widows, the disabled, orphans) robs men of their dignity and responsibility, and sows the seed of long-term weakness - that's a lesson you can learn from many giving situations in Kenya too. I'm using the figures by way of comparison, not to promote a policy. But back to the West.

Those figures are just from the UK; population about 60 million. What about the USA, population about 250 million, where (as I understand) they eat and throw away far more? And what about the food that people don't throw away, but eat simply in making themselves fat and unhealthy and for no good reason?

The real facts of the matter are that it's not lack of land or excess of reproduction that's the problem. It's a deficit of the fear of God and of our accountability to him for what we do with our lives and resources. When the West solves that root problem, the others and the quality of the fruit will begin to take care of themselves.

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