"Let Them Eat NOTHING!!"

At least the French got cake, right?

...The European Union is divided on how to help poorer nations fight a growing food crisis and address shortages of fertilisers caused by the war in Ukraine, with some fearing a plan to invest in plants in Africa would clash with EU green goals.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted a global food crisis and fears of worse to come because of a drop in grain exports from Ukraine and a spike in prices of chemical fertilisers, of which Russia and Belarus are major producers. read more

The EU has for weeks tried to help its poorer neighbours in Africa and the Middle East to weather the crisis by offering them fresh funds, while trying to convince them EU sanctions against Moscow and Minsk are not to be blamed for the food emergency.

At a summit of EU leaders later this week, the EU was planning a new initiative that would structurally decrease poorer nations' reliance on Russian fertilisers by helping them develop their own fertiliser plants.

But at a meeting with EU envoys last week, the EU Commission explicitly opposed the text, warning that supporting fertiliser production in developing nations would be inconsistent with the EU energy and environment policies, officials said....

Some of you are old enough to recall the banning of DDT by rich Anglo-Saxons in the US and Europe.  The only negative?  Brown and black people would die of malaria in Africa and SE Asia.

So the ban went into effect.