https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/07/06/congress-passed-global-food-security-act-heres-why-thats-historic

President Obama and the US government tackling global hunger and extreme poverty, this is certainly a big step for humanity's future. This is an interesting topic to discuss about, especially that the topic is about world hunger, and plans to end it.

America's policy for global food aid, when they say they're donating $5M worth of food to some region, doesn't mean they actually send that money to the region, or buy food in the region to send to the country.

What it means is they take that $5M and spend it domestically, within the United States, to buy food at market prices from American farmers, and then ship it to the affected region, wherever that happens to be in the world.

It's effectively a means for the government to subsidise farmers, dressed up in a humanitarian veil.

Now sure, there might be occasions where this is the most sensible approach, but it's the approach that is used always. In many cases what would be much more sensible is to buy food from the local area, which means shorter distance to ship, and it will be food that the people in that country are already familiar with eating. Furthermore, if the aid money were given to whatever local farmers and food producers there are in the affected country or nearby countries, they would gain a lot more out of it too. The US, being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, really doesn't need to be subsidising it's farmers like this.

Here is the actual bill, none of it preemps Lanth's point (which is pretty dodgy) but it does suggest some investment in affected areas, though it all depends on what the presidential beuro drafts for specifics.

Yeah, I wasn't talking about this specific new bill.

Peter Singer, an animal rights activist, had an idea I found compelling. He talked about the huge wastefulness of the meat industry. Like, all the grain that goes into feeding the animals that are being raised for the slaughter. If that grain was instead used directly to feed humans, then world hunger would be saited like three times over (don't ask me for stats on that number lol). Thoughts?

I've always been pretty harsh on this world hunger thing. The problem is these people are reproducing when they shouldn't. They're making their food situation even more difficult that way. But of course such places have limited access to contraception, or worse, the Christians are preaching that the use of such things is sinful. So overpopulation (over in regards to food supply) is a big factor.

Lastly, we've all heard the phrase "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Yet that is exactly what we're doing when we send over those food supplies. That money would be better spent on teaching the population how to grow their own food, and various other techniques (I don't know the specifics not my area).

My two cents.