Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Food scarcity? Really?

There are tons of articles out there that highlight the problem of food scarcity in the world. Well, there are some who would refute that. Has the human population grown so humongous, that the world's food resources are not enough for us? Or does the problem lie in the unequal distribution of these valuable grains of life?

But, why would rational beings like us make a decision to leave millions starving? Such is the influence of market forces in our present day society. There is food abundance, waste of agricultural resources and less concentration on the areas that need basic foods. The reason is : monetary gain from the food industry does not tie in with societal gain.

Go ahead and take a look at these webpages :
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/Myth_FoodScarcity.html
http://www.psrast.org/nowohu.htm
http://www.foodfirst.org/node/239

These pages contain almost the same content. I think it would be foolish to assume that those who are living in developed countries, and even the richer section of developing countries, do not indulge in gluttony and over-consumption. The imbalance in developing countries is evident in the following article by the Food and Agriculture Organization: http://www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/obesity/obes1.htm

What we can do is to look at ways of improving food distribution in our local area, and also figure out means to make this process marketable.

More later. All posts are welcome!

Saturday, January 5, 2008

The purpose of this blog

Hello,

This blog has been set up in order to exchange thoughts and ideas on topics that would help the community. Yes, this is pretty vague and there are several directions this could take. It could be on curriculum for schools or even innovate ideas for biomedical applications. To make it just a bit more specific, I would like to concentrate on the following areas: children in need, education of the masses, health and hygiene, food for the starving.

Many of us are trying to figure out what to do with our lives, and more importantly, are not yet DOING anything to help the community. Therefore, there are three steps to go through :
1) Acquire knowledge on the area you want to contribute in
2) Come up with innovative ideas on how to make YOUR contribution to society
3) Figure out how to implement your idea
This is, of course, just a general template on how to go about it. If there are other ways, enlighten me!

I am really eager to talk to those who have similar motives as I do, and also to those who already are acting on their ideas. So, please put forward any thoughts to help those who read this blog help themselves.