[Pud237]

Look at what has happened to world populations since the discovery of cheap energy (oil)..

Places otherwise unable to support big populations have grown rich on selling expensive oil and buying cheap food. But now in the West, we can make our own 'oil' from our otherwise profit-less food. Countries need to do something to reduce their population growth. Look at Africa, even with the AIDS crisis and regular bouts of famine the population is still rising. Creating more hungry mouths will cause nothing but pain in later years.

History has shown no matter how much surplus food a poor country has, in a hungry, free market world it'll be their own people that starve first. Look at the potato famine in Ireland - while the western half of the country was starving through losing their staple, Dublin was still exporting thousands of tons of grain around the world, because an Indian or a Frenchman or a Scandinavian across the sea was willing to pay more than an Irishman could afford.

Thats the free market, folks, and if a poor country allows its population to grow out of control on the back of cheap imported food, they're no better than the man who takes on a big mortgage on the assumption interest rates won't rise. Its very sad, but globalism and free-trade is the cause of this problem, not the solution.