Ethiopia Pleads For Food For 6.2M People

BBC NEWS :

The Ethiopian government has asked the international community for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people.

Read the whole story: BBC NEWS

Comments

[gbrooks]

09:48 AM on 10/23/2009

Okay, we'll pony up some food aid, but it should also come with a zillion boxes of condoms/birth control. If the population is too large to be sustained, that's the root of the problem and sending more food aid without a solution for the actual problem will only exacerbate things and make the future bleaker.

Sounds a bit cold, but I hope that some people understand what I'm getting at.

[minimalist syntax]

04:52 AM on 10/23/2009

The world cannot stand by and let people starve like this.

[Ghost803]

04:00 PM on 10/23/2009

It can and most probably will.

[jsarets]

10:46 PM on 10/22/2009

Developing world farming communities need money to buy things they can't produce, especially medicines, so they plant commodity crops that they can sell on a globally-competitive market.

They've adopted western monoculture in an attempt to compete, but they don't have the water, soil treatments, or massive agribusiness subsidies to make it work, and it's ruining their farmland.

They need rainwater catchment ditches that passively irrigate crops by soaking into the sides of the berms. They need supplies of compost to kick-start soil regeneration. They need to plant hardy trees like figs, dates, and citrus, as well as jojoba shrubs as a promising cash crop. In the shade of these trees and amongst the water transport of their root systems, they can plant tubers and legumes.

What they can't do is try to grow fields of corn and then depend on the world's charity when they can't feed themselves in this way. They should not be copying our agricultural methods. It's not even sustainable for us, let alone adaptable to their demanding climate zones.

[gbrooks]

09:50 AM on 10/23/2009

Couldn't agree more. Simply dropping off a zillion pounds of rice will not help.

[JoeBlough]

02:42 PM on 10/22/2009

Sorry, Republicans say hunger is a pre-existing condition. No help from those guys.