The answer is very simple: Food is what is called strategic interest for a given country.
Food is essential for live, you have no food, you die. If you or your children starve you will pay anything for food. Society's stability depend of the supply and price of food.
E.g It is said that "Arab's spring" was about "people wanting freedom". It was really about food being ultra expensive in the north of Africa and speculators hoarding most of the rice and cereal in the world so they could benefit from the situation.
We have seen recently what happens when countries ignore strategic interests. US companies that made face mask and ventilators like 3M sent manufacturing overseas to places like China. When the Covid emergency broke, China did this:
1. China has higher priority to any other country.
2. If your country criticizes China(and the communist party CCP) in any way, you must censor them or there is no face mask for the people in your country. No censorship, no masks.
3. If necessary, China will nationalize factories.
4. The surplus will be sold to the highest bidder. China will send already paid cargo for higher bidders.
5. You praise China, even when the virus came from it. You demand no investigation.
That was self inflicted damage done by the West ignoring strategy 101.
You can not let other countries control your basic food supplies or anything strategic. Europe can not send most of their food by sea because the US has the biggest navy in the world. So if you do something they don't like, they just can block your supply chain and make food prices skyrocket and change governments so they become puppy States.
In fact, one of the secrets of US' success was that it could expand from the East Coast to the West by land with no European interference.
> Food is essential for live, you have no food, you die. If you or your children starve you will pay anything for food. Society's stability depend of the supply and price of food.
That doesn't mean your country has to grow it.
A much better solution for individual food security is food stamps.
If your country has problems with a temporary lack of food one of the easiest things to do is to import more and if nesacery subsidize it. Famines tend to come from broken economic and political systems like imperial UK in Ireland and communist USSR, they both refused to import more food during a famine and in fact exported a lot food
Only so long as you CAN import it. Which means you need to ask from where - which gets into a large number of political issues. You may be forced to overlook something evil (slave labor), or even contribute to evil (pay bribes to someone who is turning around and using those bribes to fund an army that is planning to attack you).
Just because the world is currently politically stable for those reading this does not mean that will continue.
Food is essential for live, you have no food, you die. If you or your children starve you will pay anything for food. Society's stability depend of the supply and price of food.
E.g It is said that "Arab's spring" was about "people wanting freedom". It was really about food being ultra expensive in the north of Africa and speculators hoarding most of the rice and cereal in the world so they could benefit from the situation.
We have seen recently what happens when countries ignore strategic interests. US companies that made face mask and ventilators like 3M sent manufacturing overseas to places like China. When the Covid emergency broke, China did this:
1. China has higher priority to any other country. 2. If your country criticizes China(and the communist party CCP) in any way, you must censor them or there is no face mask for the people in your country. No censorship, no masks. 3. If necessary, China will nationalize factories. 4. The surplus will be sold to the highest bidder. China will send already paid cargo for higher bidders. 5. You praise China, even when the virus came from it. You demand no investigation.
That was self inflicted damage done by the West ignoring strategy 101.
You can not let other countries control your basic food supplies or anything strategic. Europe can not send most of their food by sea because the US has the biggest navy in the world. So if you do something they don't like, they just can block your supply chain and make food prices skyrocket and change governments so they become puppy States.
In fact, one of the secrets of US' success was that it could expand from the East Coast to the West by land with no European interference.