>> Secondly, Overpopulation and famine are not correlated. Holland is more densely
> populated than, say, Ethiopia, but which country has more malnutrition? China
> has a higher population density, but it is the former Soviet Union that had the
> enormous famine in the Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands dying. It is
> interesting to note that China and Holland have something in common: both are
> good at managing land resources.
> (...)Say
> what you want about China's corrupt and incompetent leadership - a
> densely-populated country must adapt or perish, so it socialises the
> distribution of land, which is probably the best avenue for China. I don't know
> how Holland does it - a capatalist answer may be that it sets limits on how much
> land one can own. That's still a kind of socialisation when you think about it.
> Perhaps someone from Holland may like to contribute here.
In the Netherlands ("Holland") the capItalist answer is simply to import
fodder, mostly from developing countries, for the approximately fifteen
millions of pigs and two millions of cattle that live in the country
together with its fifteen millions human inhabitants. So the agricultural
area used to produce Dutch vegetables, meat and dairy products is greatly
enlarged (I think the Dutch use about five times the national
agricultural area to produce fodder abroad), thus causing erosion and
soil impoverishment in the developing countries and large eutrofication
problems in the Dutch soils and waters. The solution? Export the shit
(literally) to where it came from: the developing countries! This is
actually done to some extent, but of course these countries must pay for
the "high quality Dutch fertiliser".
Now that REALLY is a capitalist answer.
Mark Marissink
(despite my e-mail, I am from the Netherlands)
