CONTRA THE MALTHUSIANS:

Scarcity Amid Abundance (Darío Montero, Oct 16, 2007, IPS)

Hunger in this region today is not a problem of a lack of food, but of inadequate purchasing power among the poor.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that Brazil has enough food to provide up to 2,960 kilocalories a day per person, above the recommended 1,900 kilocalories.

The same is true of Argentina, once known as the world’s breadbasket, and Uruguay next door, which exports a large part of the meat and dairy products and nearly all of the rice it produces, while domestic prices of those products are currently high for workers.

On the other hand, "poverty and extreme poverty take on a culture of their own, and it takes years, and specific policies, to fix those problems," Luis Álvarez, with Uruguay’s National Food Institute (INDA), told IPS.

"What we have to tackle is the transformation of the culture, that has generated the crisis and structural inequality," he argued.

Commodities are never scarce, just maldistributed.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 17, 2007 7:13 AM