Letter to the editor:

Farm subsidies are no help to the hungry

Bruce Feher, Las Vegas

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding a Las Vegas Sun editorial Monday, “A global food crisis: World must increase production, aid to feed 1 billion hungry people”:

It is a sin that people go hungry while the “geniuses” in Washington pay select farmers not to grow food.

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Discussion: 7 comments so far…

By lcdrmandingonamvet

10/20/09 at 5:28 a.m.

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America's rich WASP farmers, dairy owners, and ranchers are global pimps of oppression withtheir whites-only welfare programs called SUBSIDIES. O"BUMBLER promised to end tht racist welfare practice. There are no Black owners in any of these industries adn they are giving SHARECROPPING a bad name.
By POWERPLAY

10/20/09 at 9:03 a.m.

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Hey icdrmandingonamvet: You need to get a grip with yourself your posts are just awful and you allow yourself to come out as a hypercritic always jumping on the conservatives and acting like the liberals are little angels who never screw-up. LOOK PAL People have been abusing other people for the last 4000 years' Now that doesn't make it right but your postings make you sound like an angry old black man and a little kid all at the same time. It's blacks like you that give other blacks a bad name you try and make it sound like all blacks are helpless and should have pity taken on them. Instead of going out in life and working to be successful you make it look like like non-whites are helpless and should just be given up on in life by the rest of society. I will say this your daily whining about being a victim in life is a big turn off! I can't see a man like you having alot of friends and thats to bad when someone do's this to themselfs.
By El_Lobo

10/20/09 at 5:47 p.m.

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Feeding the population of the world is a major problem that is not going to go away. We have approxiamtely 6.5 billion people currently on this planet and by the end of the 21st century, we will have over 10 billion....maybe as many as 12-15 billion people. I don't know about you, but I find that thought very troubling....

We as a planet have not faced up to the fact that sooner or later we're going to run out of most everything that we need in order to sustain life itself as we know it!

Will all future wars be fought over resources (food, water, energy. etc....)? I think it's a safe bet to assume that.

The Axis Powers in World War II (Germany, Japan, & Italy) basically went to war over land and resources. One can talk about political ideology and how that contributed to bringing about the war but land and resources was the main cause.

We're very lucky as a nation. Food shortage's are clearly not part of our problem as a nation. Many other nations around the world aren't as fortunate, however.

It's also interesting that most of the poorer nations not only suffer from the lack of a steady food supply, but those same nations are among the fastest growing in terms of population...

Maybe that's what the main job of the United Nations should be... Dealing with population growth and working to enhanse, protect and increasing the basic resources found through out the world...
By jlb101

10/20/09 at 6:49 p.m.

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Anyone ever heard of birth control. I've seen pictures of starving African families and here is Mama with one more in the oven, ready to pop out and begin starving.
By odeman

10/20/09 at 11:33 p.m.

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There is more to the farm subsidies than paying rich farmers not to grow. Farming is a capital intensive and highly risky venture. Farmers can have their whole year wiped out in a matter of minutes, yet they stay on the job making sure the good people along with the whiners have plenty of food to shove in their pie hole. Look at what the free market did to the financial system. Do you want that to happen to your food supply? Subsidies level the playing field where Wall Street and the big agri players dominate the pricing. If you think farming is so easy, when can you start. Don't whine about farmers when your belly, cupboards, and grocery stores are filled with cheap high quality food.
By adrien

10/21/09 at 2:22 p.m.

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It's not the farmers, ranchers and dairy owners who get the big money. but the big agric. players such as ADM with the subsidies ruining our food with their fructose CORN syrup instead of sugar which is in everything you eat from a box. But this is not the worst. Now the gov't is subsidizing ETHANOL for them to change our food into gasoline so that the price of corn is sky high for the farmers and ranchers to be able to feed their chickens & cows. This is why we can't afford to buy dairy products... meat, milk and eggs has doubled and even tripled in price. Get ready to join everyone else at the food warehouses and with food stamps. As more & more people have to use them, our food prices will continue to run sky high to pay for food along with this Hugh Ethanol Scam subsidy!
By adrien

10/21/09 at 2:42 p.m.

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Zumbabuai SA was known as "the Breadbasket of the World" until it's dictator ran all of the white Africans out of their homes & farms and burned them all down causing the white africans to leave its country. Now the black africans are starving and can't even feed themselves and have to live on aid from the rest of the world, since they never did anything after this for themselves.