4 ms·
Providing free food to poor countries runs the food producers out of business in those countries and counter intuitively harms their food security
by jncfhnb 2y ago
Providing free food to poor countries runs the food producers out of business in those countries and counter intuitively harms their food security
- erremerre 2y agoThen give it to your enemies, send it to North Korea!
- rasz 2y agoMore money for Nuke development aimed at Japan?
- inanutshellus 2y agothen... you could dump it in the ocean and feed fish to help the fishing industry (which arguably would be a wise thing anyway given Japan's love of seafood). IIRC the USA did (does?) that with corn.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoIsn't that also how we ended up having corn in so much food we produce.
- ambicapter 2y agoDumping it into the ocean? Probably not.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoThat would be particularly stupid : agriculture is not something sustainable (at scales of thousands of years), and especially not agriculture using fertilizer based on fossil fuels (only sustainable at scales of hundreds of years ?), which I presume Japanese farmers use ? And you suggest that they deplete this non-renewable resource faster ?
- inanutshellus 2y agoThe intent was to strategically react to crises, as opposed to the existing perpetual (60 years and counting) bribe program. Strategically/rarely buying and dumping excessively cheap grain would bolster farmers' livelihoods, prevent price collapse, and... some fish get fed one time.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThen the farmers are incentivized to overproduce every year because the government will buy the crops
- inanutshellus 2y agoCrisis inherently implies rarity. If every day for sixty years is a crisis, it's time to reevaluate bigger life choices. Feels like we're just having fun poking invented holes rather than arguing in good faith here.
- jncfhnb 2y agoIt wouldn’t be a rarity if you create an incentive structure that rewards overproduction
- marcosdumay 2y agoYou react to crises by storing grain. Not by dumping it or by underproducing.
- inanutshellus 2y agoNo the problem is overproduction. Storing grain would give you even more grain, further increasing the crisis (which is price, not availability).
- marcosdumay 2y ago
- nothackerfox 2y agoThis is true. In the spirit of charity, what if we kill more businesses? Seems like doing good in the world can also have negative impacts we may not be aware of.
- BurningFrog 2y agoSelling it on the open world market should benefit the world the most.
- jncfhnb 2y agoIt still boils down to dumping. This is a hard problem. You don’t want the global markets determining that you have a competitive disadvantage relative to peers and thus want to import all of your food and abandon your domestic production. You also don’t want farmers hitting the prisoners dilemma issue of producing as much crop as possible because then farms die from competition. And again letting them die is not good for a critical industry like food. Paying farmers to underutilize their land is a less insane idea than it sounds.
- wolpoli 2y agoThen they could give free food to countries that are experiencing short-term famine through natural or man-made disasters. In such a situation, consumers are helped and producers aren't really able to increase production in response to the high price - hence a famine.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoUnless those countries are already net importers of rice