College students as a generality are more likely and willing to accept and support change. Perhaps it’s youth or our idealistic views of our world at large, but it seems like we are the first to get behind environmental issues, or cutting edge tech. I was reading about the G8’s new stance on world agriculture and I thought some of you on sharenotes.com might find it interesting because what they are talking about almost seems .. I don’t know common sense to younger generations. What we’re talking about here is world hunger and the fact that we still (as a planet, not necessarily the US) have yet to find the means to feed people adequately. And that’s what I mean about it seeming almost common sense, food and water are among the most basic of human needs. It’s literally the very least we provide to inmates at any prison virtually anywhere.
In the past years the world view of support for Developing nations in Africa was to provide “emergency food” aid whenever needed. The problem with this of course is in nations where farming can be difficult the situation is almost always an emergency. Despite this fact, America and a great deal of the more developed nations have been systematically providing food for Africa. This system at it’s core is based upon the old adage: give a man a fish, they eat for a day, teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. The problem is of course that the focus has been almost completely on the giving a fish aspect.
In America this is largely due to the powerful Farming lobby who have pressured congress to keep American Food going to 3rd world African nations. You might not think of Farmers as being a power lobby, say like the NRA, but when there are millions of subsidized dollars at stake, the Farm lobby has made itself very persuasive.
So when Africa relies largely on foreign crops, what happens when those nations do not produce sufficient crops? You have what happened last year, when food prices spiked, exports we’re slashed and many nations descended easily into chaos. Luckily, the G8 has realized this problem and have committed an ambitious 20 Billion in Aid, however this time it focuses largely on “teaching a man to fish” to hopefully provide for the longevity of agriculture and the reduction in foreign emergency rations. They plan on helping to provide the proper knowledge, seeds, fertilizer and access to market that are required to produce and sell viable crops. If nations can become self sufficient agriculturally, it help them make a great leap forward towards being a fully developed nation. The G8’s pledge is however, just that, a pledge. A lofty target at which they might aim. There’s been western support but no doubt conflicts will once again raise from those very same lobbies and organizations that mean to keep things status quo.
Whether you support what the G8 is doing or not, it’s interesting to see the paradigm of the world shift slightly before our eyes. Likely the G8’s goals won’t be realized in full, but that new ways of solving worldwide dilemmas are being explored is a step in the right direction. The Green movement has garnered a great deal of attention from the media, but the universe is ever evolving around us in a great many ways. As always I invite you to share you thoughts just as you share your notes on sharenotes.com, we always love to hear from our community.
Adelena Leon, posts a nice collection of lecture notes and class notes for University of British Columbia! She reached 20,000 points by uploading, selling and sharing her college notes from University of British Columbia! We just sent Adelena a spanking new 8 gig iPod to say ‘Thanks!’
William Wong, posted a great collection of 
Andrew Wong, shares out another 400+ 