Devastating food waste, capitalism will let you starve

first “All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe,” says Feeding the 5,000, a campaign group which is pioneering food recycling. Tesco – the UK’s largest supermarket – admits that 28,500 tonnes of food waste were generated in its stores and distribution centres in just six months. And this is only part of the 15 million tonnes of food which is thrown away in the UK each year. Is this a new and startling reality? Not for me i've known for a while now that many supermarkets who do not manage to sell their food in time before they go past their sell by date are thrown away. If capitalists cannot make a profit on a comodity they would rather scrap it than allow teh poor to eat for nothing as there is no profit in that. This is the bare face of modern capitalism for me. sold. At a basic level, we are alienated from the very substances that keep us alive. Instead of seeing the lettuce leaves, apples, meat, fish and bread as precious products developed from nature by our fellow human beings, most see them as little more than useful commodities. We have long lost the connection with the land and soil on which they grow and the people who tend the crops. We prefer not to think about how “free range” eggs are collected by cheap labour or how animals are kept and slaughtered. We don’t think about the end destination of plastic, polystyrene and packaging used to attract children to dangerous sweets and to make us buy more an But what is needed is something different. The for-profit market-growth model must always prioritise its shareholder returns. Yes, some capitalists are much more far seeing than others. Yes, they may even believe the greenwash they churn out through their clever publicists. But as the recent scandal with egg production in the UK shows, the bottom line for most companies is that they want to maximise their profits. One of the greatest scourges of humanity – hunger and malnutrition – could be overcome if humanity could open up an alternative path where eating, like heating, comes before profit. This is why i fight and believe in a communist future with socail production at its heart producing for peoples needs not profits that only a few benifit from. There is more than enough food and resources in the world if we didnt focus on producing for profit and market share.

The impending crisis’s of the coming century

This may sound all a little depressing but it is a post I’ve wanted to do for a while now. It focus’s on the crisis’s that are not so spoken of that will play out in the future no doubt. These crisis which revolve mainly around vital resources to live including food and water will potentially lead to wars as resources become scarce in big over populated areas of the world. All this is in among the back drop of a global economic crisis which shows no sign of improving despite the reports of green shoots and slow growth and the like. This is the norm now for many now we will never see a return to the post 2008 so called boom years of consistent 3 or 4 percent annual growth with a rising wage economy. Not in my lifetime can I foresee this changing under this current capitalist system. Food and water shortages does sound utterly ridiculous to comprehend in the west today wit our glut of over production and far too much food produced and plenty going to waste yet millions if not billions still go hungry every year due to lack of profitability in selling food to the poorest on the planet. As with water the thought of us not having enough will soon absurd to many reading this that may live near water and certainly in the UK we are surrounded by it yet we are running out of clean, good quality drinking water for life to survive. The fact tat capitalism due to its short termist nature of producing for profit and not for need has resulted in a situation where our population has grown but our infrastructure has not kept pace with the ever growing demand. In fact in a recent Guardian article it is claimed The Yemen is already running out of water Sana'a risks becoming first capital in world to run out of viable water supply as Yemen's streams and natural aquifers run dry Despite plans to focus on rainwater harvesting and on water drilling, Yemen's political uncertainty has pushed sanitation and water access down the list of priorities. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA Under a staircase, clinging to a wall of Sana'a's Grand Mosque, groups of women and children lug plastic canisters to the leaky spigots of a public fountain. Some small children struggle with canisters nearly their size as they weave slowly between the fountain and the pushcarts used to wheel the water back home. Whether in cities or villages, this is how millions of Yemenis secure their day's supply of water. As few can afford to pay for water to be pumped to their building, public urban fountains, which are free, remain the only option for most. Umm Husein, a resident of the capital Sana'a, said she has tap water only once or twice a week. Trips to the communal fountain – taking time out of work or studies – involve her whole family. "The women, the children, every day we go to the fountain to get water," she said. Water and sanitation are chronic problems in Yemen, where, on average, each Yemeni has access to only 140 cubic metres of water per year for all uses – the Middle East average is about 1,000m³ a person annually. In recent years, the government of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh had taken strides to improve water access in Yemen, but the political turbulence that arose from last year's uprising has pushed water down the new government's list of priorities, according to aid workers and a government employee. Changing priorities Two years ago, Yemen's general rural water authority (GRWA) commissioned an assessment of existing water projects and coverage. The organisations that took part came to a collective decision to focus on rainwater harvesting in Yemen's highlands, and on water drilling in the coastal and desert areas. Yet the ensuing political chaos halted progress in implementing solutions, according to Abdulwali el-Shami, an engineer in the government's public works project (PWP) in Sana'a. Beset with crises, the new president, Abd Rabbu Mansoor Hadi, has put little energy towards resolving the water crisis threatening the majority of Yemenis. Ghassan Madieh, a water specialist for UN children's fund Unicef, said he did not "see any serious attention being given to the issue of water scarcity, or the low coverage in water and sanitation". Jerry Farrell, country director of Save the Children in Yemen, echoed this assessment: "[In June], the ministry of planning rolled out its plan for the next 20 months … and water was at the bottom of the list." Though solutions exist, the will and attention necessary to put them into practice remain absent, observers say. Farrell said that without a greater governmental commitment to water issues, international aid organisations dealing with water will not be able to work effectively in the country. The government must also provide water subsidies for the extremely poor while water infrastructure is developed, he added. The spectre of a country run dry looms over Yemen's nearly 25 million inhabitants. With its streams and natural aquifers shallower every day, Sana'a risks becoming the first capital in the world to run out of a viable water supply. The water table in the city has dropped far beyond sustainable levels, Shami said, because of an exploding population, lack of water resource management and, most of all, unregulated drilling. Where Sana'a's water table was 30 metres below the surface in the 1970s, he said, it has now dropped to 1,200 metres in some areas. The water supply in this largely arid country has been the source of decades-long ethnic conflicts, particularly among nomadic groups. In the northern governorate of al-Jawf, a blood feud between two prominent local groups has continued unabated for nearly three decades, largely a result of the contested placement of a well on their territorial border. Abdulwali el-Jilani, a water specialist in Sana'a with the Community Livelihood Project, a programme to improve water access funded by the US aid agency USAid, warned that as water supply diminishes, tensions will rise: "Water is and will be the reason for powerful conflicts in the future."

Further crisis's of capitalism, food prices to double by 2030

The price of key crops could rise by up to 180%, Oxfam says Continue reading the Food prices 'threaten millions'
More food market regulation urged
The prices of staple foods will more than double in 20 years unless world leaders take action to reform the global food system, Oxfam has warned.

By 2030, the average cost of key crops will increase by between 120% and 180%, the charity forecasts.

Half of that increase will be caused by climate change, Oxfam predicts, in its report Growing a Better Future.

It calls on world leaders to improve regulation of food markets and invest in a global climate fund.

"The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the increasingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiralling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy," said Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's chief executive.

Women and children

In its report, Oxfam highlights four "food insecurity hotspots", areas which are already struggling to feed their citizens.

We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis - one in seven people go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone”


Oxfam chief executive
in Guatemala, 865,000 people are at risk of food insecurity, due to a lack of state investment in smallholder farmers, who are highly dependent on imported food, the charity says.
in India, people spend more than twice the proportion of their income on food than UK residents - paying the equivalent of £10 for a litre of milk and £6 for a kilo of rice.
in Azerbaijan, wheat production fell 33% last year due to poor weather, forcing the country to import grains from Russia and Kazakhstan. Food prices were 20% higher in December 2010 than the same month in 2009.
in East Africa, eight million people currently face chronic food shortages due to drought, with women and children among the hardest hit.
The World Bank has also warned that rising food prices are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.

In April, it said food prices were 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa.

Oxfam wants nations to agree new rules to govern food markets, to ensure the poor do not go hungry.

It said world leaders must:

increase transparency in commodities markets and regulate futures markets
scale up food reserves
end policies promoting biofuels
invest in smallholder farmers, especially women
"We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis," said Ms Stocking.

"One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone."

Among the many factors driving rising food prices in the coming decades, Oxfam predicts that climate change will have the most serious impact.

Ahead of the UN climate summit in South Africa in December, it calls on world leaders to launch a global climate fund, "so that people can protect themselves from the impacts of climate change and are better equipped to grow the food they need".


From the BBC.

But what this article does not mention that it is the corrupt rotten system of capitalism that has led us to this position. The hunger for profit has come before the hunger for feeding the world. The fact that climate change has occured can be directly attibuted to capitalism and its exploitation of the earth. The only reason there will be further food shortages in the future will be down to this unfair system and only a over throw of this system to a fairer socialist society will be able to benifit the many not just the few.

In rich countries such as America and the United Kingdom so much food is wasted yet so much of the world goes hungry, How can this be ?

Mass over production of food in the west is not expropriated around the world. There is no collaboration to help poorer nations feed their population and that i'm afraid is a disgrace that we continue to allow to happen in 2011.