Morally, is producing more food to feed the hungry the right thing to do?

Question

Most reasonable people will say yes, but think about it.

If our food is in abundance, we will procreate and make an even larger population, where even more people will go hungry. So again you say "produce more food, of course," and now the population is even greater, with an even greater number of people going hungry. Eventually there won't be any more space to make more food, no more forests to chop down to turn into farmland. And we'll not only have destroyed the earth, but caused an enourmous amount of people that will have to starve.

So I think the better solution is to limit the population of our species, which however is no easy task. Birth control hasn't halted our expansion.

We live in a culture that believes expanding and conquering the entire world is a goal, but this destroys the world.

I guess I should have stuck to something a little more specific in my rambling, but what are your thoughts?

What I'm saying is producing more food isn't necessarily a good thing - since it only leads to a larger human population (which is harmful).

Answer 1

I guess it depends on which side of the table you are on. The side with all of the food or the side with none. Depending on your circimstances ,your ideas and thoughts tend to be different. If you were without food,what would your thoughts in this be?

Answer 2

Actually, the U.S. throws away enough food every day to feed every single hungry person in the world. And that's just the U.S. Imagine what the quantity would be like if you added in other first world nations.

There is NOT a shortage of food. And there is no need to "cut down forests" to make more farmland, because agricultural scientists have developed hybrids that produce more food in a smaller space. For example, 100 years ago, not every corn stalk had an ear. But with careful seed selection, they got to the point where every stalk has at least one. And now they've developed ears that are longer and wider with more grain on each one. And if they can get two ears on each stalk, so much the better. Management practices have changed, too so you can plant corn closer together and still get a good crop, or get a good crop from dryland (non-irrigated) farms.

So that's one way to solve world hunger -- better food production. Another way is to share education about these better management practices and seed development with second and third world nations so that they, too, can produce more food in smaller spaces.

That's one of the things the Foods Resource Bank is trying to accomplish. It's a really good program to support.

In fact, if ever person in the U.S. would make it a point to buy only what they will eat so they don't throw food away, and then use the $$ savings to support the Foods Resource Bank and other similar programs, we could feasibly end world hunger completely within a decade.

Of course, that's not taking into account the dictatorships that prevent people from getting food. Remember the so-called "foods for arms" program in Iraq only meant that food was rotting in the palaces while people starved to death.

Hunger is solved through political justice, education and generosity among the wealthier people, dude. Not by trying to artificially limit the number of kids that people have.

Before you start developing "moral" theories on an issue, you should take the time to learn all the angles of the issue. Your understanding of agricultural production and the politics of hunger are wanting. No surprise -- most people in the U.S. are just like you. But I hope you'll think about these things the next time you buy more food than you can eat and chuck part of it in the trash.

Answer 3

I live in a deer-hunting rural area and this all seems like an argument on whether or not to have feed plots for deer or how many we should be allowed to kill. That creeps me out a bit.

Anyway, we have many issues in this question. 1. population 2. food supply 3. land management -maybe more. I'll stick with these three.

1. Population: Statistics show that when a people moves out of the 3rd world as far as living standards they don't reproduce as much. Is it education? Is it resources? Is it something else to make you happy besides sex? I don't know but that seems to be how it works. So let's help people move out of the poor living standards that seem to lead to higher populations.

2. Food Supply: I'd argue we have plenty of food on the land we use now. Part of the issue is waste and inefficiency. The farther up the food chain you move the more inefficient the food source is. For example, you can produce 250 lbs of beef on one acre of land. You could also produce 40,000 lbs of potatoes on that one acre. Which feeds more people?

3. Land Management: Again, we are using a lot of this land to grow crops to feed animals, to in turn feed us. And soon we will be using even more land to grow ethanol corn to feed our cars. We have enough land to keep everyone well nourished. We are not being efficient with it.

Those are my thoughts. Is it ok to view people like deer? My moral compass screams no to me on that one. We need to look at the problem from many different angles.

Answer 4

People are not starving because there is not enough food to go around. People are starving because while some producers produce so much that they have to dump their surpluses, food just doesn't get to some who need it.

The basis of you idea is that if the population of the world will keep increasing untill there is not enough food to go around. But in these days of family planning, the human race has moved on from reproducing as fast as we can to reproducing at a sustainable rate.

I think we could feed the hungry and reproduce our population at a sustainable rate. I think one day we will achieve this and eventually overcome global poverty.

Answer 5

This is a sticky subject, for instance it is known that the government often pays farmers to destroy excess crops in order to maintain prices based upon supply and demand. That food could have easily gone to the hungry. Perhaps people need to start thinking about the future generations on this planet rather than their own self interest when they decide to start excessively large families. Now I've done my rambling too.

Answer 6

I think the solution should be, that every one or family is self reliant on them selves, so it does not matter how big or small the population.

Right now, there are no shortage of food, our resources are wasted on welfare and food stamps.

My take is always, if you keep feeding the seagul, they will never learn to fish. Helping the needy is good, but help them to stand up by them self is ideal.

Answer 7

countless studies have shown that overpopulation and malnutrition are related to education, specifically, education of women.
where women get schooling and information to reproductive health care, birth numbers go down dramatically. this has been shown over and over.

so how about, instead of starving poor people to death to control the population, we just work on educating the women of the world, and feed the people that exist?

Answer 8

Feeding everyone is the least we should strive to do.
If the population gets too high,... nature will do some "weeding out". Maybe a good pandemic will come along.

Answer 9

Actually it is because the wealth of the world is in possession of less than 1%. That means few have it all and everyone else has not! Population is a scape-goat.

Answer 10

Birth control and family planning is absolutely necessary.

I hate crowd.