Famine by Choice

by Investor's Business Daily

Man cannot control the weather. But famine today is as much man-made as it is a force of nature.

Zimbabwe, for instance, was once considered the breadbasket of Africa. It exported wheat, corn and sugar cane across the continent and beyond. But the country's agriculture industry has been destroyed by a Marxist government that has seized privately owned farms in the name of "land reform."

Over a short period, Zimbabwe went from being a net exporter of food to a country dependent on international handouts. The once-fertile nation is in a perpetual man-made famine, where more than 2 million go hungry in a population of 11.4 million.

Less known is the story of Malawi. Earlier this decade, kleptocrats within the government sold off the nation's grain and kept the profits for themselves.

Governments promote famine in more passive ways as well. Another African nation, Zambia, declined food aid, mostly corn, from the U.S. in 2002, even though it was facing a famine that would affect nearly one-third of its people.

Why? Because America was offering genetically modified food, and it was the country's policy — based on Europe's unfounded fear of such products — to reject it.

Through genetically altered organisms, which pose no health problems to humans, farmers are able to plant seeds that grow into crops which are resistant to drought, cold weather, insect damage, herbicides and disease. Nutrition can even be improved through genetic modification.

Given that we have the technology to grow larger crops on smaller parcels and fly fresh food around the world to where it's needed in a matter of hours, the obstructionism is inexcusable. We need policymakers who are as advanced as today's technology.

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15 spectacularly stupid predictions from Earth Day 1970

by Ronald Bailey

Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

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The U.N. caused the famine in Somalia

by John Derbyshire

Well-meaning aid organizations often exacerbate the problem which they are supposedly there to alleviate.

In January of 1994 I was deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, partly in response to the “Blackhawk Down” incident.

As part of our preparation we were given extensive intelligence briefings on the history and culture of Somalia. A little acknowledged fact is that there was no famine in Somalia prior to the U.N.’s arrival. To be sure, there were localized food shortages and hunger, but no widespread famine.

The famine began when the U.N. arrived and began giving away food. With free food available, farmers cold not sell their crops and so they stopped farming; the U.N. became the major source of food.

Once U.N. aid convoys were the only viable source of food, it was easy for the warlords to seize the unarmed convoys and food warehouses and monopolize the food supply. Presto, instant famine.

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