Food Crisis: Some Suggestions
There has been much hoo-haa recently around the world, especially in poorer countries, over the large rises in food prices recently.
But New Zealand, as a country, stands to gain A LOT. We have excellent farming land, advanced technology, and animals by the truckload. New Zealand could potentially make a huge deal of money out of this.
To ensure New Zealand's eventually triumph in the upcoming years in food production, here are some suggestions:
1) Remove "green" regulations to the production of food. Remove GM hysteria over food production. Invest in new technologies and capital for the most efficient food production in the world. Allow for more intensive farming. Issues such as water pollution caused by animal excrement and chemicals on the farm can be sorted out by privatizing basic bodies of water, such as rivers and sections of lakes. (This has worked very well in Scotland.)
2) Deregulate the market on a world scale. New Zealand has done very well by promoting its food products around the world, facilitated by free trade. This doesn't concern NZ, at least as much as the EU, which prevents the crucial development of African farmers from getting them to produce their food in the long term, independently. The same applies to the United States (and Canada?).
3) Slash other regulations to production. Slash limits on how much food can be produced at what price, what amount, etc. Important issues such as quality can be sorted out primarily by the market and organizations such as consumer watchdogs, with government interference only after an act of force or fraud has been committed.
There you go, some suggestions for the upcoming food crisis. Let's see whether basic principles of market economics are followed, and if not, how well the situation turns out otherwise.
