A valid point.
Food absolutely should be a commodity. Food being a commodity means that it is so widely produced and of consistent quality that it’s fungible. Food being a commodity is why we don’t have famines nearly as much as in the past.
Let them eat theory!
We don’t have famines in the US anymore, sure, but apparently have settled on 1/6 the population experiencing some degree of food insecurity/hunger as acceptable.
Other parts of the world much less white still experience famines quite regularly.
We have almost a hundred years of plant patent experience.
Famine has become increasingly rare. The famines that do occur happen mostly because of political instability not a lack of food. When they are from a lack of food, food aid (mainly in the form of commodity food stuffs) greatly limits the mortality rate of the famine.
Famines generally are less deadly, this is true, as is the fact that they’ve disappeared from the white west (fttb.) also true is that famine has increased in frequency in Africa over the last two hundred years, and as we speak some 40 million humans are in the grip of declared famines, with many millions more at risk.
There is a political dimension to practically all famines in history, regardless of how and why they began.
Rice, beans, etc are food. Also food? Processed food (which I feel like must be what you’re mostly referring to by “commodity food stuffs” but again, still food)
Food is what solves hunger. Feeding starving people is what reduces mortality. This is not a market mechanism, it is biological, and western “charity” is not a savior.
I find it endlessly insane that the world produces enough food for every human to have a healthy diet and then some. I’ve heard all manner of justification for the existence of this fact, but inevitably I just circle back to the heart of it- many must starve so that some may be as fat as they wish. Over it.
The “pepsi potato” would be grown by farmers (specialists in growing seed potatoes) under contract to pepsi, distributed to contracted farmers for the grow-out and pepsi collects and uses the crop. It’s like growing popcorn for Orville Redenbacher.
The key is that it’s all under contract, for a specific type of potato. I’ve seen that sort of contract and it’s quite clear exactly what you can and can’t do with the patented variety you are buying.
Patents END. The original Roundup Ready cotton and soybeans are out of patent and anyone who wants to can plant them.
Others are patented, but in an open source manner: like the pest-resistant eggplant recently released in India. Anyone who wants to can breed to that variety.
I have to say, obese consumers of huge packets of Lay’s chips aren’t going to care.
I do though. Not gonna try Pepsi’s revolutionary “Raspberry Cola”.
Besides, Pepsi set fire to Michael Jackson’s hair (before we knew about his alleged child molestation), and that changed him.
And more besides, Pepsi is a foul sugary concoction that tastes disgusting.
#LateStageCapitalism
For you and me, meanwhile, others starve where they can’t afford it.
Now they do… copyrights used to be as short. Now they last for decades after the death of the original author, and for well over a century and a half for corporate ownership. Patents are shorter now, but will that stay the same in the age of data and information? Seems unlikely to me.
This is not the case here. The existence of open source patents doesn’t mean traditional patents are open.
Actully, this is not so shocking.I recently read of a company that developed a near perfect potato for chips.Unfortunately, iit turned out to have unacceptable levels of poison. The potato is, after all a relative of the mandrake.They had to destroy the entire crop.
Looking at food yields and the like, I think we could argue that the commodification of food has led to mugh higher production. Yields are highest when there’s the market to sell it. History is replete with examples of expropriation and command production, and it hasn’t got many successes to show for it.
I’d prefer to address the very valid point of the necessity of food for human existence by addressing demand rather than supply (i.e. give people money to buy food) not because I have any great love for the market, but because historically (and currently) it’s doing a better job than the alternatives.
Now, the market isn’t on or off - we’re a long way from laissez-faire for very good reasons. But I do think that like a very complicated engine, changes are best made in reaction to longer term problems with a full understanding as to what the cost is going to be. (As I have often said, if you cannot make a cogent argument why a change is a bad idea, you have no business making an argument why the change is a good idea on net.)
Personally, I think there is a major problem in the current market - we need to significantly increase the cost of food by mandating the growth of a wide variety of various foodstuffs. Currently we grow the single variety that produces the most food at the least cost. This is tremendously efficient (which is why food is so historically cheap), but it means we are truly vulnerable to plant diseases that would be terrible in a multi-species environment, but are truly catastrophic in a monoculture (which the market tends towards).
That sort of long-term (10+ years) horizon is usually not addressed well by the market. But then it’s also not addressed well by the government (“Hi. We need to add 50% to your food cost for a problem that you’ll never see because we addressed it”)
But it’s pointless if people can’t access those higher yields.
That’s assuming that the way we do things is the only way or the right way.
history is also replete with people starving for lack of a dollar. The only choices aren’t complete commodification or Stalnist terror. It’s getting sort of tedious having people assume that’s what the only other option is, when it’s not.
Demand for a necessity is steady. People NEED to eat, it’s not a biological choice. Like water and air, they are needed for basic biological functions. That’s not up for a debate, it’s a fact of life.
Except when it hasn’t, two cases of which I noted above in the British empire. Millions died to service the market in both cases, just like millions died in the Ukraine when Stalin refused to step in. The market can be just as autocratic as a dictator.
And people’s LIVES should not be subject to that complicated engine, not when it comes to being able to eat, or breathe, or drink water.
So MORE people can’t access it?
Just about every food you eat has a patent or other intellectual-property protection involved. The good news is that it is dangerous to neither the environment nor humanity. In fact, this protection makes it possible for people to get a decent return on their labor and creativity.
Except many patents are not owned by individuals, even those who are part of the creation process, but by corporations, whose only goal is profitability.
