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Or maybe we need to stop relying on globalized markets for vital production. A country is really sovereign if it produces enough food for its own population.

Or maybe we need to stop relying on globalized markets for vital production. A country is really sovereign if it produces enough food for its own population. One of the main reason of the food dependency of Northern African countries is ... the EU policies. Huge amounts of public money are given to farmers each year so that their selling prices are competitive on the global markets. Those global prices are lower than local production cost in Northern Africa. So the European Union basically made these countries dependent through its agriculture policies. Egypt has also a very large population for its very limited arable soil. But Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco have plenty land and water enough to feed their population. And yet they are dependent on food importations to survive. So the Egyptian case is specific and hides a larger truth. Many West African countries are dependent as well to subsidized European meat. Local farmers can't compete. Each country should be allowed to put tariffs on food importation high enough so that local production is enough to feed the country. The USA, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zeland, Ukraine, Russia and the EU just won't allow it. The EU put a large fight to protect its farmers against competition from the aforementioned countries. And that was and still is a good strategy. But it goes too far, as described before. We need to stop building such a fragile global economic system. Free markets are simply NOT efficient to ensure access vital goods and services. Self-sustainability for vital needs should be a priority, at a minimum on the country scale, but the smaller scale possible is always preferable: that's resilience, hence sovereignty. Food, water, shelter, security... and love are the humane true necessities. A country should be able to guarantee this to its population, whatever happens : large war, pandemy, unseen solar eruption that kill most electronic devices, extreme and unseen natural disaster due to climate dereliction. We are not ready to face uncertain times.

throwaway6532 5y ago
It's also stunning to think about how many people legit rely on humanitarian aid to stay alive, and if things break down to the point where that starts to dry up then that has a big effect on those populations.
csee 5y ago
Wait, isn't there a contradiction here? You said countries need to protect their agriculture to remain sovereign, which is what the EU is doing. Then you blame the EU for protecting their agriculture. Which is it?
- FrenchAmerican 5y ago
  > Wait, isn't there a contradiction here? You said countries need to protect their agriculture to remain sovereign, which is what the EU is doing. Then you blame the EU for protecting their agriculture. Which is it? I get your point. The issue is the hyper-productivism of the EU's agriculture. Public money, e.g. the citizens' money, is used to ensure revenues to farmers. I have no issue with that. But since that money is public, it is supposed to serve the general interest. The EU could decide to encourage organic farming rather than industrial agriculture based on Monsanto seeds and pesticides. The latter make possible high levels of production, but to a huge cost for biodiversity and even climate dereliction. And it destroyed agriculture of subsistence, forcing them to specialize in monocultures like banana and chocolate. We pay our farmers to destroy our ecosystems, polluting the rivers, with proliferation of a green algae on our beaches which vapors can kill a man. So public money is spent to clean the beaches to protect tourism. Farmers themselves have health issues since they are exposed to high levels of pesticides. All this because the EU, and especily France, need to export food for its commercial balance, instead of producing high quality food for its population. 20%/of pesticides in France are used on the vineyards, which amounts to 3% of the agriculture surface. Around Bordeaux, pesticides are found within the children hair - meaning it is ingested by merely respiring. The "good part" of maintaining African countries dependent for basic food is to keep them producing what we made them produce during the colonozation., e.g. exotic fruits, coffee, chocolate etc. The US does just the same. Cereals are heavily subsidized and the same dependency is organized to keep Central & South American dependent for basic food. The soils of the great plains of the Midwest are being mistreated to the point of desertification. Well, with enough water, huge amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, the industrial agriculture still works, even if the yields are on a diminishing trends. But the climate dereliction imposes o the US larger and longer droughts every year. Food sovereignry is important, but preserving fertile soils in the long term is a must. Biodiversity enablea an ecosystem to adapt to a changing climate, to some extent. Nowadays, the change is far too fast to allow Nature to self-regulate, e.g. to keep the soils alive by the natural selection of the adapted species. American billionaires are no buying huge pieces of preserved land in New Zeland for no reason. They know. No that it is difficult to know, we just prefer to ignore it. It's like Putin's threat on Ukraine or the emerging imperialism of China. We all know but don't act accordingly. The Covid pandemy is the direct consequence of industrial meat production. Too many animals concenteqted on small surfaces in the name of productivity, in contact with humans. Virus emerge, some kill the animals, like the avian flu, and some jump to men, in general indirectly through bats or pangolins or rats ... If that Chinese lab in Wuhan was studying coronaviruses, it's precisely to have vaccines ready for the pandemies that will inexorably happen since we don't want to change our agricultural practices. Many scientific reports are gloomy, like the IPCC, because the numerous meta-anaysis of ten out thousands of studies give us a very clear picture of what is happening (the 6th great extinction of species on Earth) and the climate dereliction. 50ºC temperature in Australia, in the Middle East are now annual. Droughts in the US and Europe, huge fires evverywhere. We are stupid. Big money make people believe in the virtue of free markets to ensure the public good. It just ensure that the 1% get always richer and the 0.1% doubled their fortune thanks to Covid, in less than 3 years. And people turn to billionaires like Musk to save the world(as if he cared) or to populists with anti-liberal agenda, on the far-left (Chavez) but more often on the far-right (Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, neo-fascists in Italy, Christian-nationalists in Poland, Erdogan in Turkey ... just to name those who were.elected). Sorry for the gloom, I just don't see a way out since democracies are failing to put in power the right leaders. At best, we have some Obama, Biden or Macron, who are not bad guys but in the end, do nothing to correct the economic system. Our democracies keep electing people who protect the 1% class they belong to. So more and more popular and middle class voters elect far-right leaders who have no solution but the hate of their scapegoats of choice.

throwaway6532 5y ago

It's also stunning to think about how many people legit rely on humanitarian aid to stay alive, and if things break down to the point where that starts to dry up then that has a big effect on those populations.

csee 5y ago

Wait, isn't there a contradiction here? You said countries need to protect their agriculture to remain sovereign, which is what the EU is doing. Then you blame the EU for protecting their agriculture. Which is it?

FrenchAmerican 5y ago
> Wait, isn't there a contradiction here? You said countries need to protect their agriculture to remain sovereign, which is what the EU is doing. Then you blame the EU for protecting their agriculture. Which is it? I get your point. The issue is the hyper-productivism of the EU's agriculture. Public money, e.g. the citizens' money, is used to ensure revenues to farmers. I have no issue with that. But since that money is public, it is supposed to serve the general interest. The EU could decide to encourage organic farming rather than industrial agriculture based on Monsanto seeds and pesticides. The latter make possible high levels of production, but to a huge cost for biodiversity and even climate dereliction. And it destroyed agriculture of subsistence, forcing them to specialize in monocultures like banana and chocolate. We pay our farmers to destroy our ecosystems, polluting the rivers, with proliferation of a green algae on our beaches which vapors can kill a man. So public money is spent to clean the beaches to protect tourism. Farmers themselves have health issues since they are exposed to high levels of pesticides. All this because the EU, and especily France, need to export food for its commercial balance, instead of producing high quality food for its population. 20%/of pesticides in France are used on the vineyards, which amounts to 3% of the agriculture surface. Around Bordeaux, pesticides are found within the children hair - meaning it is ingested by merely respiring. The "good part" of maintaining African countries dependent for basic food is to keep them producing what we made them produce during the colonozation., e.g. exotic fruits, coffee, chocolate etc. The US does just the same. Cereals are heavily subsidized and the same dependency is organized to keep Central & South American dependent for basic food. The soils of the great plains of the Midwest are being mistreated to the point of desertification. Well, with enough water, huge amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, the industrial agriculture still works, even if the yields are on a diminishing trends. But the climate dereliction imposes o the US larger and longer droughts every year. Food sovereignry is important, but preserving fertile soils in the long term is a must. Biodiversity enablea an ecosystem to adapt to a changing climate, to some extent. Nowadays, the change is far too fast to allow Nature to self-regulate, e.g. to keep the soils alive by the natural selection of the adapted species. American billionaires are no buying huge pieces of preserved land in New Zeland for no reason. They know. No that it is difficult to know, we just prefer to ignore it. It's like Putin's threat on Ukraine or the emerging imperialism of China. We all know but don't act accordingly. The Covid pandemy is the direct consequence of industrial meat production. Too many animals concenteqted on small surfaces in the name of productivity, in contact with humans. Virus emerge, some kill the animals, like the avian flu, and some jump to men, in general indirectly through bats or pangolins or rats ... If that Chinese lab in Wuhan was studying coronaviruses, it's precisely to have vaccines ready for the pandemies that will inexorably happen since we don't want to change our agricultural practices. Many scientific reports are gloomy, like the IPCC, because the numerous meta-anaysis of ten out thousands of studies give us a very clear picture of what is happening (the 6th great extinction of species on Earth) and the climate dereliction. 50ºC temperature in Australia, in the Middle East are now annual. Droughts in the US and Europe, huge fires evverywhere. We are stupid. Big money make people believe in the virtue of free markets to ensure the public good. It just ensure that the 1% get always richer and the 0.1% doubled their fortune thanks to Covid, in less than 3 years. And people turn to billionaires like Musk to save the world(as if he cared) or to populists with anti-liberal agenda, on the far-left (Chavez) but more often on the far-right (Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, neo-fascists in Italy, Christian-nationalists in Poland, Erdogan in Turkey ... just to name those who were.elected). Sorry for the gloom, I just don't see a way out since democracies are failing to put in power the right leaders. At best, we have some Obama, Biden or Macron, who are not bad guys but in the end, do nothing to correct the economic system. Our democracies keep electing people who protect the 1% class they belong to. So more and more popular and middle class voters elect far-right leaders who have no solution but the hate of their scapegoats of choice.