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Jack Downey Comments on Canadian Issues
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Photo by Julie Ann Biggs |
How We Can Help with Third World Food Shortages
In my last article, I did an overview of the complications of feeding the homeless/hungry in our urban areas. For those who missed it, the gist of the article was:
A country as rich as Canada is should not have a shortage of food. Food is available via, soup kitchens, food banks, charities and waste bins. If one commits a crime and gets arrested, food is provided in jail. Not all options are nice, but one need not starve.
Canadian Charities and Volunteer Agencies are facing our food shortage problems in a professional manner within their financial limitations.
Canada is well off, generally speaking. Very large parts of the world are facing extreme poverty and very low levels of nutrition. We want to help.
A Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) statement:
"Efficient use of land, labor and capital is also at the heart of development efforts to combat poverty and satisfy human needs. Allowing the most efficient producers to provide the world with its goods and services is the principal rationale for an open trading system. We will ensure that Canadian foreign policy promotes sustainable development globally through the careful and responsible balancing of trade, development and environmental considerations."
A closing statement by our Finance Minister, the Honorable Paul Martin, at the G8 Conference at Meech Lake gives us a "Heads UP" on Foreign Aid spending:
"…foreign aid should be increased, as long as poor countries can prove that their governments are
sound and that the money is being spent wisely."
Canada and other countries spend many millions of dollars annually donating food to third world countries. There seems to be no end to those requiring our food assistance. There are large numbers of NGOs (Non Government Organizations) wandering around the world and spending your tax dollars in helpful, but sometimes unfocused, ways. The World Bank and International Monitary Fund pour many more millions of dollars into these countries, yet food shortage persists and is the main cause of war and gross poverty.
We over-fish our oceans and pollute desperately needed fresh water instead of applying practical ways to increase food production. There are major, chronic food shortages in the world and gross local famines take place regularly. Useable land is becoming far more difficult to develop into food bearing domains. Population increase in Asia, India and China has brought on massive feeding problems that North America and Europe are expected to alleviate, even though we have our own problems at home. First World facilitated birth control is seen as Genocide in the Third world where the need for children to work and supply even minimal financing to the elders is essential. Something needs to be done, but that something needs to be the right thing. Often we provide the wrong solution.
Wrong Solution Example #1:
Not long ago there was a great to-do over children weaving Rugs in Asia. There was a Western world movement to out law this practice. Yes, child labor is a terrible thing, but without everyone in the family working, a Third World family may not survive. When the rugs were boycotted here a very large number of families there died of starvation.
Wrong Solution Example #2:
On the hill roads of Nepal, families break up large boulders and reduce the smaller ones to the size of your fist. Five or six year old girls break those fist sized stones down for gravel. The few Rupees they add to their family's income mean survival. We want to send the girls to school, but what about the lost income from their absence on the production line?
There are many factors that can cause food shortages. Some of these, such as droughts and floods, are acts of God, about which we can do nothing. Others, such as war, are acts of foreign governments about which we can do little. One major factor in food shortages and other world misery, about which we as Canadians may be able to do something, is destruction by Rats and other rodents.
Rat Facts:
Rats have contributed to the deaths of more humans than have all the wars and revolutions in history combined. The worldwide damage and destruction caused by rats and mice exceeds 200 billion dollars each year. Rats destroy 20 percent of human food supplies annually,
enough food to eliminate world hunger. Rats carry more than 20 often-fatal diseases, including bubonic plague, dysentery, rabies, spotted fever and many more. Dangerous disease-carrying insects, such as fleas, ticks, lice, mites and mosquitos, infest rats. A rat can smell poison at one part in a million and will urinate on the poison to warn other rats not to touch it. A pair of rats can produce up to 620,000 descendants in only three years, if left unchecked. Rats will gnaw through wood, plastic, lead sheathing, cinderblock, aluminum siding and some concrete to get where they want to go and are able to squeeze through half-inch openings.
Rat control worldwide requires simple, but effective systems to protect food. Anti Rat technology should be one of the prime Canadian development projects for Canada's aid to the Third world. Let's be part of the right solution!
Right Solution Example #1:
In Thailand, I went to a village on the Kok River. The farmers had a large bamboo silo on stilts.
It held several tons of grain and there was a "walk around" platform with stairs leading up to it.
I asked about rodent problems and was told that rats were climbing the trees and then sliding down
the fronds into the bin. After having eaten their fill, the rats were jumping over the edge and
going about their affairs. I was told that it was forbidden to kill the animals.
We cut back the trees and put netting across the top and kept the "sliders" out.
The rats were also getting up via the walkway and gnawing through the walls to the rice.
As the village had 220-Volt power, I taught them a way to solve the problem using the same
principle as the "bug zappers" in our Canadian dairy barns. "On" the steps we installed an
on/off electrical switch. When the stairs were down the power was off
(to prevent electrocution of humans) and when the stairs were up the power was on and
connected to a mesh system. Around the walkway we installed three inch wide copper mesh
and along the bottom edge of the silo another piece of copper mesh. The two pieces of mesh were
close, but did not touch each other. A rat would walk around the walkway on the positive wire
mesh strip, searching for a way in. If he touched his nose against the mesh on the silo and it
was good bye rat! The local monks Ok'ed this simple system because we did not kill the rat. It killed itself. Any visiting rat attempting to gnaw into the silo, was electrocuted and then cart wheeled off. The "rat show" gave great delight to the locals and provided food for the chickens and pigs.
Right Solution Example #2:
Another of my rat tricks took place in Cambodia. I suggested this ploy to two of our Canadian Nurses that ran a Maternity hospital in Mae Sot. To raise money for the hospital, the staff raised and sold crocodiles. The Crocs were kept in big cement and wire compounds. Croc food was provided through something I had learned as a boy on the Prairie. We shot Gophers for a bounty. We taught the Khymer kids to make small spear guns, much like a Scuba gun.
For every rat they speared, trapped, or electrocuted there was a cash bounty.
These young shooters could drill a rat, with a 5" arrow made from a coat hanger propelled by a piece of
bicycle tubing, at 25 yards! The Crocs got fed, the kids got paid and there were few rats anywhere in that village. When I first suggested this Bounty system I was ridiculed, but the system has now caught on and Rat Bounty is spreading in S.E. Asia.
The need for money in these poor areas has led the odd saffron robe on a Monk to conceal a "Rat Gun."
In my opinion, rat elimination assistance is something that Canadians could feasibly provide to Third World countries in order to reduce food wastage. If you agree, please suggest to your MP that this is one way in which we can be effective both offshore and here at home. We need to stop the scattering of aid dollars on ineffective programs. If enough of us lend a voice, action will result and hundreds of thousands of starving people can be helped.
Your MPs E mail is listed on Gov. of Canada website.
More Information on Rats: The Scourge of Food Storage and World Health. click here
More information on Homeless nutrition problems. click here
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