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The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. - Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, chapter 25

wahern 4y ago
Some scholars argue that the famines in Africa toward the end of the 20th century were more than anything else a result of the collapse of economically sustainable local agriculture resulting from rapid industrialization and cheap imported grains. Food became so cheap that farms couldn't produce enough income as going concerns; people quit farming en masse. Populations in countries with little local agriculture remaining became exceptionally vulnerable and susceptible to price and distribution shocks, such as from monetary or military conflict stressors. Many other countries have historically avoided famine in part because their political systems depended upon and heavily favored local agricultural interests--not the laborers, but specifically the financial security and opportunities of the agricultural land-owning classes. And when and where they didn't, e.g., Ireland in the late 19th century or China in the mid-20th century, things played out in predictable fashion. Such emphasis doesn't create an optimal state of affairs for maximizing overall wealth and economic equality, but it's one way, however primitive, to buffer volatility and minimize the chances of catastrophic food failure; and helps explain why such seemingly unfair socio-political favoritism, often with seemingly perverse side effects, persists today, let alone in the 1930s.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  You have to realize that these are baby steps for our civilization. Only since the 1920s and commercial fertilizer use has food become abundant to such a degree, and logistics so sophisticated that we could fathom supplying excess food to multiple entire countries. It is doubtful that the people who conceived plans for providing such aid foresaw all the consequences of their actions, because there was simply no historical precedent for such a scale of intervention. Food was scarce. Countries usually didn't have enough of it. It only seemed like the best way to alleviate that was to just _give people food_. As it turns out, maybe that wasn't the best way, but it was lieky a lesson that needed to be learned the hard way.

wahern 4y ago

Some scholars argue that the famines in Africa toward the end of the 20th century were more than anything else a result of the collapse of economically sustainable local agriculture resulting from rapid industrialization and cheap imported grains. Food became so cheap that farms couldn't produce enough income as going concerns; people quit farming en masse. Populations in countries with little local agriculture remaining became exceptionally vulnerable and susceptible to price and distribution shocks, such as from monetary or military conflict stressors. Many other countries have historically avoided famine in part because their political systems depended upon and heavily favored local agricultural interests--not the laborers, but specifically the financial security and opportunities of the agricultural land-owning classes. And when and where they didn't, e.g., Ireland in the late 19th century or China in the mid-20th century, things played out in predictable fashion. Such emphasis doesn't create an optimal state of affairs for maximizing overall wealth and economic equality, but it's one way, however primitive, to buffer volatility and minimize the chances of catastrophic food failure; and helps explain why such seemingly unfair socio-political favoritism, often with seemingly perverse side effects, persists today, let alone in the 1930s.

antisthenes 4y ago
You have to realize that these are baby steps for our civilization. Only since the 1920s and commercial fertilizer use has food become abundant to such a degree, and logistics so sophisticated that we could fathom supplying excess food to multiple entire countries. It is doubtful that the people who conceived plans for providing such aid foresaw all the consequences of their actions, because there was simply no historical precedent for such a scale of intervention. Food was scarce. Countries usually didn't have enough of it. It only seemed like the best way to alleviate that was to just _give people food_. As it turns out, maybe that wasn't the best way, but it was lieky a lesson that needed to be learned the hard way.