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<\/p>\nWater is the new oil\u2026meaning that moving forward conflicts over resources will concern water. \u00a0The finite amount of water, growing world population and continued climate change will force us to make some tough decisions in the near future.\u00a0 One of these tough decisions involves poppy farmers in Afghanistan.\u00a0 It is easy and not necessarily wrong to conclude that growing poppy is illegal and should not be done.\u00a0 However, there is another side to this story.<\/p>\n
Many farmers in Afghanistan have started growing poppy in recent years because that is the only crop that will survive and may be the only way they have to survive currently.\u00a0 The farmers are in a tough spot and they come to mind when thinking about the idea of a triple inequality.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t contribute much to climate change or get to reap the rewards of those who did.\u00a0 They live in an area of the world that doesn\u2019t have a temperature buffer or the infrastructure to combat the oncoming heat.\u00a0 The climate in their region, including the political climate, leaves them with little options.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to blame an afghan farmer for planting popping if that is the only crop that will grow.\u00a0 They have to survive.\u00a0 An uneasy association with armed actors is better than starving.\u00a0 It is another example that the poorer you are the more your focus shifts to the present\u2026they can\u2019t afford to think about the future.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Many of the widespread hunger occurrences in history have had more to do with politics than agriculture.\u00a0 The situation in Afghanistan is no different.\u00a0 If the government allowed the crop to grow they could be the farmer\u2019s partner instead of the armed criminals.\u00a0 Assuming corruption is derailed, this could allow for necessary infrastructure and transportation funding to enable the region to move toward food dependency.\u00a0 The effects of climate change are still not entirely known, so this would all be speculation but it could lead to a future where the afghan farmers have an actual choice to grow poppy or not.<\/p>\n
Land and water are like air, they are resources that our planet has provided us so that we can have life.\u00a0 They belong to all living beings, not just those who have economic means.\u00a0 In the film Silent Killer<\/em>, Belo Horizonte\u2019s hunger program director Adriann Orrana articulated the issue perfectly.\u00a0 \u201cFood is not a material luxury, it\u2019s more like the air we breathe.\u00a0 If people don\u2019t eat, they don\u2019t live.\u00a0 It\u2019s different than owning a car or a TV.\u201d\u00a0 Her words have convinced me that food should be viewed as a birthright and because land and water are required to grow food, they should be birthrights as well.\u00a0 People share oxygen all the time without giving it a second thought because they don\u2019t attach ownership to it, food is thought of as a possession today (at least in western cultures) but I think that is changing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ghatwai, Milind.\u00a0 \u201cOpium Crop Failure: No high for these farmers in times of drought.\u201d\u00a0 The Indian Express, 17 March 2016, http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/india\/india-news-india\/opium-crop-failure-theres-no-high-for-these-farmers-in-times-of-drought\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Water is the new oil\u2026meaning that moving forward conflicts over resources will concern water. \u00a0The finite amount of water, growing world population and continued climate change will force us to make some tough decisions in the near future.\u00a0 One of these tough decisions involves poppy farmers in Afghanistan.\u00a0 It is easy and not necessarily wrong to conclude that growing poppy… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,21,22,11,14,27,25],"tags":[193,39,105,196,81,40,113],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-consumption","category-farming","category-hunger","category-soil","category-systems-theory","category-violent-conflict","tag-agriculture","tag-climate-change","tag-hunger","tag-land","tag-political-ecology","tag-soil-water","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}