Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Reverting back to subsistence farming is not only a poor persons responsibility.

The recent price hikes in staple and basic foods across the world are a warning and indeed a wakeup call to all who value life on this earth and feel a need to nurture and look after nature as we know her.

We have plundered and pillaged nature and her resources and we are starting to feel the bite as the realisation creeps in that the honeymoon period might just be over and nature could be starting to fight back.

Insufficient crops and people starving. Countries that were exporting rice before have cut back as they need to feed their own people.

The first targets of these kind of breakdowns in food production are the poor and we in South Africa are in the midst of some desperation driven by hunger.

Trevor Manuel, our Finance Minister, urged poor people to go back to subsistence farming and yet the warning was something not heard by many it seems.

We have far too much land available for cultivation that lies unused or underused and in these times of global crop uncertainty this is tantamount to a criminal act.

If disused land were made available for cultivation, it would make feeding our people an easier task and many people unthreatened so far by shortages would be suprised at the results of their own backgarden once it is pressed into subsistence use.