Famine

Q. How do we prevent famine?

Q. How do we prevent hunger?

Q. How do we feed the world?

A. As omnivores, we can exploit almost any species that is rooted to the ground, or can fly, swim or walk. Therefor the system must ensure a thriving ecosystem so that it can continue to support us into the future. Availability of food is a key evolutionary differentiator, and our farming technology has given us an edge over other species that allows us to constantly expand our populations to the limits of food availability. There is tension between food production, land use, waste, storage and transport, population size, climate and wealth inequality, and the way national economics work, which has always meant that some people somewhere do not have access to food. In a well-managed global system there is no reason for starvation.

How does the proposed system address this problem? It improves management of the global environment and funds development of infrastructure and farming technology to allow us to grow more while limiting the impact to our supporting ecology. It improves storage and distribution to increase availability and decrease waste. It manages global economics and reduces trade barriers to ensure that all have the opportunity to exchange labour or assets for food, and that those producing food can do so profitably.

The proposed system includes:

An agriculture service that funds research into how we can produce more food with less damage to the environment and ensure the continuation and diversity of the species being farmed. It includes funding to help industrialise successful research and will buy and hold relevant IPR to aid global exploitation.
An infrastructure service that funds development of global transport assets, food storage and preservation processes. It manages distribution of water and energy to areas that need it, as well as managing the supplies of energy and water to satisfy multiple demands from agriculture, domesticity and industry.
An environmental service to manage the quality of water resources, soil and atmosphere and to mitigate damage caused by pollution and waste. This service also tries to maintain the balance of our supporting ecology with its multiple species that vary in size from bacteria to whales, whether their lives are managed by humans (farmed) or must survive and evolve on their own. The system would be the ultimate owner of all natural resources, and would control all commercial activities that exploit them through standards based licensing.
A social service that reduces financial inequality and provides a financial safety net to enable every person to access enough money to buy food. It also ensures that global health and safety standards are applied to level out agricultural labour costs across producers.
A disaster management service at the global level which allows resources to be marshalled and action to be taken where it is needed.
A single economics model that removes all trade barriers and tariffs, and evaporates existing national Government debts, both of which currently cripple the international free flow of food supplies. It provides a single currency that removes the uncertainties of shifting exchange rates and underlying values. It could specify global minimum prices to ensure profitability and standards compliance even for small producers.
A single governance environment that enables free of movement of labour, goods and services that will allow those affected by climate change to more easily move to a better environment, and allow seasonal labour to flow where it is required, without causing cultural and social conflict.

It takes time for farmers to switch production, and the commercial minded are always looking to make more money with less effort from their labours and investments. This can often lead to big swings in production that cause imbalances in supply and demand of various products. How much should government interfere in this free market? Probably just enough to ensure food availability and the supply of inputs, but not enough to interfere with the variety of products and consumer demands that drive innovation and change.

The system also reduces the ability to wage war, a major contributor to the loss of production.

Our successes have led to global population increases that stress all our systems. One issue may be that our populations keep growing with food availability, so that famine somewhere becomes inevitable. It might be useful if we could control our population levels rather than have nature control it for us. This is discussed elsewhere.

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Q. How do we solve the Water crisis?

There is more than enough water on the planet to satisfy all our needs, it is just in the wrong places and in the wrong form.

Imagine, if you will, a fleet of autonomous tankers, connected to weather predictions and seeking rain on seas. Collecting, filtering and sanitising rainwater, but also capable of desalinating seawater. Then sailing to the nearest port with greatest need and pumping it into a land based distribution centre. They should be capable of generating their energy through solar, wind and wave to create a perennial cycle with minimum maintenance and human intervention. This system would be adaptable to seasonal weather in northern and southern hemispheres, and adaptable to global demand.

Need more clean water? Then build more water collectors.

Drought at a specific location? Then redirect collectors.

Who would pay to develop such a service? Who would pay to maintain it? Who would pay to use it? This is feasible with a single world government.

Additional thoughts on Carbon Capture.....

Common arguments link the production of carbon dioxide to ‘greenhouse gases ‘ that have the potential to warm our planet. Less well known is that water vapour is also a greenhouse gas, and whereas carbon dioxide is about 0.04% of the atmosphere, water vapour varies between 0% in cold regions to 4% in humid ones. On average water vapour is at least 10 times more relevant to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide. So here is a thought. Let us use the energy generated by wind turbines at night to power huge dehumidifiers that extract water vapour from the atmosphere and bottle it. The technology is known, available and just needs scaling to provide a much cheaper solution than our ridiculously expensive efforts to extract carbon from the atmosphere. Bottled water is also more useful than lumps of carbon and if done at scale could provide one thread to the solution of regional drought.