As a lot of readers already mentioned, most famines have a political background. In those cases there isn't a need for some high-tech corn, but for another policy. Somebody mentioned the famines in China in the 50's/60's. Now China has 1.5 billion inhabitants - more than ever - but you didn't hear of any famines lately - did you?
And in the 40's they were estimating that China could only support 400 to 500 million inhabitants...
And for those interested in history: in the sixties the american agricultural industries produced already some kind of high-tech corn (it was called the "green revolution"). They did breed the corn the old-fashioned way however. The business plan then (as today) was: Sell each year seeds, and sell special fertilizer and pesticides... already then it didn't work because the people didn't have the dollars or the knowledge to handle this high-tech thing. Those countries just dont have the money to buy european or american seed, fertilizers or pesticides.
So you don't really need such high-tech stuff, you need more land in the hand of small farmers (right now in the third world a very small percentage of farmers own a very high percentage of farmable ground) producing for the local market.
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As a lot of readers already mentioned, most famines have a political background. In those cases there isn't a need for some high-tech corn, but for another policy. Somebody mentioned the famines in China in the 50's/60's. Now China has 1.5 billion inhabitants - more than ever - but you didn't hear of any famines lately - did you? And in the 40's they were estimating that China could only support 400 to 500 million inhabitants... And for those interested in history: in the sixties the american agricultural industries produced already some kind of high-tech corn (it was called the "green revolution"). They did breed the corn the old-fashioned way however. The business plan then (as today) was: Sell each year seeds, and sell special fertilizer and pesticides ... already then it didn't work because the people didn't have the dollars or the knowledge to handle this high-tech thing. Those countries just dont have the money to buy european or american seed, fertilizers or pesticides.
So you don't really need such high-tech stuff, you need more land in the hand of small farmers (right now in the third world a very small percentage of farmers own a very high percentage of farmable ground) producing for the local market.