College Essays-Agriculture trade and Food Aid are both very complicated and interwoven

College Essays-Agriculture trade and Food Aid are both very complicated and interwoven

Agriculture trade and Food Aid are both very complicated and interwoven topics.

On the surface you may think that open trade and then helping those in need are the obvious best choices in all situations.  I hope that the videos that you watch and the other research that you do on these help you to understand some of the complexity.

First, the video that you all should watch “What are we doing here?”  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. examines food aid in Africa.  At the end the four men are more torn in opinion than when they first started – I hope the same for you.  (I told you at the beginning you should end with more questions than answers from this class!)

Food aid doesn’t just mean dropping bags of grain in the Saharan desert, it can also be domestic “Food Stamps”  – SNAP or WIC or even food banks.  In the books you have an option to read, both endorse gardening as one means to assist in food security.  Will Allen’s book addresses the other side of that – the cultural push-back against working the land.

We see the other side – Agriculture Trade portrayed in “Life and Debt”.  Some places – like land rich United States, can grow a lot, and thus makes our commodities inexpensive, (Of course, you also have the subsidies debate to convolute the discussion as well) while smaller countries could grow enough to sustain themselves, but economically cannot compete with the world market because they do not have the efficiency of size.