[rmc]

Globally, we currently produce more food than we need. The problems we currently have around starvation and malnutrition appear from my limited research to be centred on distribution, comoditization and other socio-economic factors.

Remember some "produced food" is fed to other food to make meat. What would you say if vegetarianism was legally required?

[pyre]

That in general, we might be better off for it?

That said, it really has no bearing on this discussion. Currently companies do things like destroy perfectly good grains in an effort to prevent the price from dropping due to over-supply. Why? Because it costs money to store, so better to just destroy it. If we come up short later, then it's even more beneficial to the company because the price actually goes up!

That's not even touching the issue of Africa, where most 'aide' that is sent never makes it to the starving people due to political turmoil / warlords / etc.

[rmc]

I'm skeptical of claims that "food problems are just distribution, we produced enough food to feed everyone" claims, especially if it starts with "well, first everyone must switch to vegetarianism... easy!", and would need some convincing that it's possible to "end world hunger" without massive drastic changes.

[DanBC]

Replying to this really late, but:

> The world's second-biggest cause of child mortality, diarrhoea, kills about 1.5 million children every year. Three-quarters of these deaths could be prevented with a simple course of oral rehydration salts (ORS) combined with zinc tablets, at a cost of just US$0.50 per patient.

For years we've[1] struggled to get this live saving cheap stuff to little dying children, and haven't succeeded.

Without any massive change - just a little bit of clever thinking, we use Coca Cola's desire to sell fizzy pop to everyone, and their delivery networks, to help ship ORS.

(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94996/GLOBAL-Follow-the-fizz-...)

I agree with you about the "We just need to [...]" school of thought being hopeless.