The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Go Hungry: Local Self-sufficiency is Key to Reallocating Food Wealth.

 Review - Opinion

Inequity and politics are causing unequal access to food, land, and wealth leading to world hunger.  In "The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Go Hungry," authors Sharon Astyk, a farmer from upstate New York, and Aaron Newton, a sustainable systems land planner in North Carolina, wrestle with the question of: can the world that is facing poverty and hunger survive when the rich control food resources, such as, land, prices of produce, and exports? The essay portrays multinational food companies as greedy and lacking empathy. While I agree that due to urbanization, poor people lack land and resources to grow food to feed themselves and many lack the necessary funds to provide more than a week's worth of processed food items for their families because "global food companies make their wares more affordable by offering them in single-serving packets" (Astyk and Newton, page 149). Astyk and Newton in the reading suggest "… growing your own food… creating food sovereignty in poor nations, [reduce the amount of] global food trade, and only import high-value, fair-traded dry goods that take little energy to transport, and place limits on food speculation." (Astyk and Newton, page 150).

The authors of "The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Go Hungry" bring attention to the fact that "inequity and politics, not food shortages [are] the root cause of... famines in the twentieth century."(pg. 149). Food shortages will not be resolved with raising food yields, only controlling multinational food companies that are controlled by the elites. Astyk and Newton throughout their argument are much about the fair distribution of food and resources as it is about the distribution of wealth. This point is most potent when Astyk and Newton say, " the world can't afford rich people — in any nation." (pg. 150). The reason for this is that new industrialize countries where there is a large inequity between their people and more industrialize countries, like the U.S. can't help us fight climate change leading to more degradation of land. Another key argument is food exports and how food exports, like coffee and shrimp, are literally taking away food from the poor. These exports create a competition between the few multinational food companies to make their products cheaper to buy and make, which leads to multinational food companies selling single-serving packets so that "few families [can] afford a week's worth of a processed food item at one time." (pg. 149) The authors, Astyk and Newton, also mention the world's belief that "if the rich get richer, it makes other people less poor." (pg. 149). This notion would be less absurd if, instead of relying on the rich, we enrich the poor by granting them land and other resources. 

While I agree with the notion that wealthy elites who "own the best lands…" which causes world hunger and the fact that poor people who depend on the land to feed their families and make a livelihood are blamed for the environmental degradation when the multinational companies are at fault. However, this is only one part of the problem:, when the population relies on multinational food companies, we give multinational food companies power over the way we eat and how much we pay for food, as stated by Astyk and Newton in " The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Go Hungry."  Their suggestion that we only buy and grow locally to take power and money from the multinational food companies is commendable;, it just isn't realistic in today's economy. Countries, developed or undeveloped, will still buy exports and prices will be made by the company to make a profit, despite the fact that 800 million people are malnourished due to unfair distribution. Also, the Earth will continue to face degradation due to monocultures destroying 24 billion tons of fertile soil every year.

The suggestion that we, as a population, should only grow our own food or buy it directly from local farmers is unrealistic. As stated in the reading, "most of the world's poorest people are urban slum dwellers or land poor farmers." (Peter Rosset, page 150) and these people may not have a consistent excess of food due to money and poor land quality. Instead, if we wanted to take back power from multinational food companies, we need to increase the export tax. This will bring more government revenue that can be used to combat world hunger. I will concede that when a country, like Brazil, exports a total of $20 billion worth of food in 2002, when millions of Brazilians go hungry isn't acceptable. However, exports of goods make countries money and poor countries, like Brazil and Ethiopia, will continue making money off exports. Governments rely on exports since they help generate government revenue, promote downstream processing industries, protect the environment, and preserve natural resources. Exports also create price stabilization, offer domestic food security, resource allocation, and income distribution, as well as, increase jobs, bring higher wages, and raise the standard of living.  Astyk and Newton both conceded that there needs to be a fair allocation of resources. However, a fair allocation of resources will be up to each individual country to define and set up and governments cater to the wealthy elite, so this will make it hard to tax certain individuals. An alternative of taxes could be that for every acre of land that a multinational food company owns, one acre will go towards the local community where local farmers will harvest the land. Also, the idea of multinational food companies only hiring from the local community will bring money back into the local community, which will allow the local community to purchase more land.