Comments on: Can Sarah Silverman help feed the world?

By: Jorge

Jorge — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:58:01 +0000

I think Paul Romer has a clear idea of what is going on in the poverty places. The first cause: the people don’t have idea of how to finish the poverty cycle, I usually work for a NGO and often met with this matter.

I don’t agree with all what he says but it makes senses in many things: ted.com/talks/...

By: froylein

froylein — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:11:49 +0000

Certainly, Modern Girl, the cheap labour also adds to people’s incomes in the developing countries, but we can try to balance the effects. Not every product is available in fairtrade, but as consumers we can insist on e.g. that leather goods don’t get dyed with colours threatening the workers’ health. It’s the little things one can do that add up. Buying fairtrade coffee won’t make a coffee farmer exchange his hut for a palace, but if it enables him to send his kids to school (particularly girls; there’s an obvious correlation between low alphabetisation and high population growth) or get access to fresh water, the one extra Euro per pound of ground coffee is way less than what we pay for in the end.
In return, producers of fairtrade products need to understand that they are hopefully catering to different cultures; there are only so many ponchos one will buy to support anti-rural flight projects in Peru, but if the product was a sweater / cardi one could well be wearing to work, fit to European sizes, the decision to throw in a few extra Euros would be much easier.

By: Modern Girl

Modern Girl — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:00:07 +0000

Thank you Froylein, that was really informative. I hate to sound like a capitalist pig in love with my Westernized society (even though I probably am), but I don’t know if ending global dependence on produce would ultimately solve the problem of underpaid labour in undeveloped countries. If those farmers weren’t farming fruit for horribly unfair wages, I would predict that they’d likely be working in a factory for horribly unfair wages.

So, while what you said is true, and eating locally may help, I think that inorder to actually create more equality in the world we would have to stop depending on ANY producst that were made from unfair labour. That sounds like an incredbily awesome idea, and my absolute respect goes out to those who can try to live their lives that way – from their clothes, computers, furniture, gasoline, and their cosmetics, video games and paper products. But there seems to be so much that we consume and use that is currently not avaiable in local or fair trade format.

By: froylein

froylein — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:15:22 +0000

Modern Girl, it’s pretty simple though many people aren’t aware of it; the global fruit and vegetable market is dominated by three large companies. I don’t know how old you are, so you may or may not have noticed that even in vegetables and fruits there are certain fashions, plus a lot of items we can now reguarly buy at supermarkets at any time of the year are seasonal and, if at all, can only be grown during a limited period locally because of the temperatures. Hothouses would be an alternative, but they raise the expenses dramatically. So, what the big players do is to have farmers in e.g. Northern Africa, Southern America etc. to produce the desired fruit. However, fruits such as strawberries are not native to those areas. The farmers see the lure of some cash (and if you see how little fruits cost, you can imagine how little the farmers actually get after retail, wholesale, customs, shipping and packaging are paid), but they need to use the ground plus in Africa and Central America they also need to access water resources – both the ground and the water would be vital to their survival / an improved lifestyle. Please consider, even in take-off countries, the degree of formal education in rural areas still is pretty low; most farmers are farmers because that’s the only thing they can do, living on subsistence agriculture. Now, one of the risks the farmers repeatedly run is that they fall behind on the global market as the fruit traders of course look for the cheapest offers. Since there really only are a few big players, those can dictate the prices – usually as low as possible. So the farmers are lured to believe they could be making some fortune from growing certain stuff, but there’s no guarantee anybody will buy their produce at a fair rate if at all.
In addition to water being a precious resource, watering ground in areas with high temperatures and low humidity more than the time-and-again-tried local produce needs often leads to salienisation of the ground; the water dissolves the minerals and carries them to the surface through evaporisation, leaving behind oversalted top layers of ground and in many cases actual salt crusts. The ground then becomes infertile for any produce, and the farmers lose their livelihood altogether.

Similar things have happened with the invention of biodiesel; the original idea was to use agricultural waste to create it, but as the demand grew, suppliers outsourced to developing countries. The decision to produce those items is not necessarily taken by the farmers, mildly put, as they can be trapped in a system of dependencies on their governments or “liege”. Now, since it has been found that Brazil seems to possess the second-largest oil field in the world and biodiesel cars there were up-and-coming anyway, Western statesmen have been advocating biodiesel in Brazil – well-aware that there isn’t enough agricultural waste so fast-growing plants (usually of no nutritional value) must be grown systematically and that also burning biodiesel has been shown to be more hazardous even than regular diesel.

By: Yonah

Yonah — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:13:25 +0000

Sell the Vatican and feed the world for a year, that way the poor will know what they’re missing when they’re starving again next year.

By: Modern Girl

Modern Girl — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:21:25 +0000

Froylein,
How would buying local help stop global poverty?

By: Roaming Rabbi

Roaming Rabbi — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:46:03 +0000

humorous? not sure

disgraceful? pretty sure

By: froylein

froylein — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:10:46 +0000

She could start buying fairtrade. Or clothes that aren’t sweatshop labour. She could eat only seasonal and locally grown produce. She could actually… oh wait, that would require some ethical behaviour by her. Nevermind then.

Good thing they don’t produce cheap laughs at three cent per hour at Indonesian sweatshops.

By: AlexK

AlexK — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:07:03 +0000

This girl is a first class nitwit with less talent than her brother.

By: J.Miller

J.Miller — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:28:18 +0000

I love Sarah Sivlerman.Why,because she has a dark twisted sense of humor.