To save time, I am going to cut and paste what I wrote in another forum in response to this appalling quiz
"There's something distasteful about appealing to people's intellectual vanity in order to donate food to those in need.
It's also generally accepted in development circles that while "free rice" has a place in an emergency situation, it's not a long-term solution to hunger. Far better to change the rules of world trade, help with income generating schemes, or empower the vulnerable and needy to demand better services and infrastructure from their governments.
If people on this site really want to make a difference, try writing a cheque to Oxfam, Christian Aid or one of the other agencies."
"It's a facile, trivial way of addressing a serious issue. It does nothing to highlight the real issues, but allows people to think that they have "done something" by goofing off on the internet for five minutes.
The rice will have been grown by heavily-subsidized American farmers. It will be transported across the globe at vast expense, causing more environmental degradation. It will be dumped on local markets, putting local growers and suppliers out of business and causing more hardship. In many cases, it will be nutritionally and/or culturally inappropriate. It will encourage dependency and weaken local infrastructures and supply chains. It will feed the corruption and rent-seeking by local officials and do nothing to empower the needy to positively change their situation.
This site benefits the American farmers who grow the rice, the American transport companies who ship it, and the Geneva-based administrators who oversee the whole thing.
An insider's view."
"My problem is with the site and the motivation behind it, not with people playing the game. I spend a lot of time dealing with community mobilisation, rights-based approaches, advocacy on behalf of and with vulnerable groups of people, overcoming negative stereotypes and enabling people to make positive change in their lives. This is mostly in the former Soviet Union, although I have worked in Central Asia and Africa in the past. In the next six weeks I will have 4 trips abroad to meet with partners and discuss these issues. The problems are complex and multi-faceted. They require us, living in the developed world, to demand sustainable solutions based on the principles of equity and social justice, to demand more accountability and a greater say for the world's poor in decisions that affect them. We do this through our politicians and through local and national activism.
Even the image of the rice bowl and grains of rice mounting up in it is offensive - perpetuating stereotypes of the world's poor as being incapable of doing anything other than receiving handouts.
I'm sorry if I've been a little heated about this, but I really found the whole thing offensively trivial. I hope that no-one has felt that I am attacking them personally for playing the game or for not donating to charity - that absolutely was not my intention. I apologise if I have offended anyone. In fact I scored 47. "