03-09-2023, 04:48 PM
This has to be worth a look tonight; I only noticed just now that its on.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/brya...J2Y4CSVZA/
"We are a nation of just over five million people, yet we produce enough food each year to feed an estimated 40 million. So why are thousands of us lining up at foodbanks run by charities to get something to eat today?
According to the Ministry of Education: “Around one in five children in New Zealand live in households that struggle to put enough good-quality food on the table. In communities facing greater socio-economic barriers, 40 per cent of parents run out of food sometimes or often.”
That’s a shameful admission for a country that makes the bulk of its income from exporting food.
But the supermarkets come at the end of our food supply chain and get a lot of attention because they are highly visible, and if you look behind the barcodes of any of the goods on their shelves, you will find a lot of companies clipping the profit ticket before you get to eat any of it.
Let’s just take one item - bread. Chances are the supermarket loaf you bought today was made from wheat grown in Australia, bought and sold by commodity dealers, transported by foreign-owned ships and trucked to one of the foreign-owned flour mills, transported to a foreign-owned bakery and transported again to the supermarket.
You probably noticed the word “transported” a few times in that last sentence.
Transportation by vehicles dependent on petrol and diesel (which we import) contributes significantly to the price you pay for your daily bread as its ingredients travel from paddock to plate.
And why does the wheat come from Australia? Because many of our farmers turned their wheat fields over to dairy production as there was more profit in it.
None of this has happened by accident. From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, consecutive Labour and National-led governments embraced neoliberal economic theory which held that the state should not be running businesses and that the twin policies of free market and free trade would allow entrepreneurial New Zealanders to create wealth which would trickle down to the lower orders, and we would be all be better off.
Well, of course, that didn’t happen because wealth doesn’t trickle down; it largely sticks with those who have it.
Do we want a fair society where every child gets an equal chance to grow up healthy and be the best they can be, or not?
Do we believe everyone should be able to afford healthy food, or not?
And what is the purpose of our economy? Is it that a few of us can get wealthy at the expense of the many? Or to create the greatest good, for the greatest number of us, over the longest period of time?"
[b]Bryan Bruce’s documentary [/b][b]The Food Crisis[/b] [b]screens on Sky Open (Channel 4 on Freeview and 15 on Sky) on Sunday, September 3 at 8.30pm.[/b]
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/brya...J2Y4CSVZA/
"We are a nation of just over five million people, yet we produce enough food each year to feed an estimated 40 million. So why are thousands of us lining up at foodbanks run by charities to get something to eat today?
According to the Ministry of Education: “Around one in five children in New Zealand live in households that struggle to put enough good-quality food on the table. In communities facing greater socio-economic barriers, 40 per cent of parents run out of food sometimes or often.”
That’s a shameful admission for a country that makes the bulk of its income from exporting food.
But the supermarkets come at the end of our food supply chain and get a lot of attention because they are highly visible, and if you look behind the barcodes of any of the goods on their shelves, you will find a lot of companies clipping the profit ticket before you get to eat any of it.
Let’s just take one item - bread. Chances are the supermarket loaf you bought today was made from wheat grown in Australia, bought and sold by commodity dealers, transported by foreign-owned ships and trucked to one of the foreign-owned flour mills, transported to a foreign-owned bakery and transported again to the supermarket.
You probably noticed the word “transported” a few times in that last sentence.
Transportation by vehicles dependent on petrol and diesel (which we import) contributes significantly to the price you pay for your daily bread as its ingredients travel from paddock to plate.
And why does the wheat come from Australia? Because many of our farmers turned their wheat fields over to dairy production as there was more profit in it.
None of this has happened by accident. From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, consecutive Labour and National-led governments embraced neoliberal economic theory which held that the state should not be running businesses and that the twin policies of free market and free trade would allow entrepreneurial New Zealanders to create wealth which would trickle down to the lower orders, and we would be all be better off.
Well, of course, that didn’t happen because wealth doesn’t trickle down; it largely sticks with those who have it.
Do we want a fair society where every child gets an equal chance to grow up healthy and be the best they can be, or not?
Do we believe everyone should be able to afford healthy food, or not?
And what is the purpose of our economy? Is it that a few of us can get wealthy at the expense of the many? Or to create the greatest good, for the greatest number of us, over the longest period of time?"
[b]Bryan Bruce’s documentary [/b][b]The Food Crisis[/b] [b]screens on Sky Open (Channel 4 on Freeview and 15 on Sky) on Sunday, September 3 at 8.30pm.[/b]
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)