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Africa Could Feed Itself; Should It?
Wall St Journal ^ | 12-03-02 | SCOTT KILMAN and ROGER THUROW

Posted on 12/03/2002 5:22:51 AM PST by SJackson

Edited on 04/22/2004 11:47:36 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

Norman Borlaug has a solution for African famine. The engineer of the "green revolution" that saved millions of Asians from starvation arrived on the continent bearing seeds of a new breed of corn, some fertilizer and weed killer, but his strategy is failing for a lack of Western support.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs
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1 posted on 12/03/2002 5:22:51 AM PST by SJackson
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To: SJackson
Is the theme simply this? Should we change the economic development policies used by the Clinton Administration, and help the African grow enough food to feed themselves?

Or

Should we continue the economic development policies used by the Clinton Administration and continue to allow the black people of Africa to be slaves to handouts?

Hmmmm......let 'em starve like Clinton, or help them feed themselves, tough choice isn't it?

2 posted on 12/03/2002 5:37:27 AM PST by Balding_Eagle
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To: Balding_Eagle
I just rememberd, wasn't Clinton our first Black president?

Why would he allow fellow blacks to starve to death? Oh, that's right. He's a Liberal.

3 posted on 12/03/2002 5:39:50 AM PST by Balding_Eagle
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To: Balding_Eagle
well, to me the choice seems pretty simple. Either we should help developing countries in a systematic manner to become entirely self-sufficient or we should not help them at all. The record of the results of piecemeal "help" has been a dismal one of extending and enlarging the problems without either solving them or allowing them to whittle the population back down to numbers supportable by the prevailing conditions.
4 posted on 12/03/2002 5:50:26 AM PST by demosthenes the elder
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Yehuda; Alouette; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Optimist; weikel; ...
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
5 posted on 12/03/2002 6:10:03 AM PST by SJackson
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To: SJackson
Only white farmers can possibly grow the food to keep black Africa alive.

Since Africans will no longer allow this farming process to go forward in their own countries, I see no reason why land and space, fertilizers and ecologic degradation, etc. that results ought to be allowed in the USA, Brazil, etc.

Africans are somewhat like Californians, in that the latter want electricity but are unwilling to have it made in their own country.

Let them all starve in the dark, until they fall on their knees if a white farmer even comes to VISIT the place.

6 posted on 12/03/2002 6:13:41 AM PST by crystalk
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To: SJackson
Africa can feed itself, should it?

YES.
7 posted on 12/03/2002 6:29:17 AM PST by buffyt
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To: crystalk
Walter Chronkite was on TV the other night telling how is he against wind mills for elec. in his area of NY. Thinks they are ugly. As he sat there in his comfortable mansion with his heat and lights on bright and warm..... I just moved back to Texas Gulf coast from La La Land. They don't want to drill for oil off their beautiful pristine Calif. coasts there. We have MANY drilling rigs off our coast. They have NEVER bothered me. I would welcome the wind mills too. And the chemical plants here? They mean PAYCHECKS. I sure am one mean capitalist conservative today! [I am a realist] Everyone wants someone else to do all the work, some place else.
8 posted on 12/03/2002 6:32:52 AM PST by buffyt
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To: mhking
something for your pinglist, I would think.
9 posted on 12/03/2002 6:38:45 AM PST by demosthenes the elder
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To: SJackson
In 1944, he was working at DuPont Co. testing condoms and other World War II military supplies . . .

Condoms were considered WWII military supplies?

10 posted on 12/03/2002 6:56:00 AM PST by LibertyGirl77
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To: crystalk
Only white farmers can possibly grow the food to keep black Africa alive.

Let them all starve in the dark, until they fall on their knees if a white farmer even comes to VISIT the place.

You are a racist. I can't believe there are FReepers who actually think this way. How totally sickening. May others show you similar charity if you are ever in need.

11 posted on 12/03/2002 7:04:43 AM PST by LibertyGirl77
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To: LibertyGirl77
Is it 'racist' to point out that Africa is what Africans made it?

For the first time, they planted in straight rows, with a uniform distance between seeds. They spread the fertilizer on a regular schedule. They sprayed the herbicide in carefully measured amounts.

Then they harvested a miracle. "The crops were so big, and there were ears on each stalk," says Emmanuel Boateng. "We were used to having many stalks with no ears." Farmers accustomed to gathering only five 220-pound bags of corn per acre reaped 15 bags. Never before had the people of Fufuo produced enough to feed themselves and still had something left to sell to others beyond their collection of mud brick homes. They paid off their loans and began planning investments in schools and roads.

But in the years since Dr. Borlaug moved on to spread his methods to other villages, Fufuo has been sliding back toward mere subsistence.

12 posted on 12/03/2002 7:24:35 AM PST by Gunslingr3
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To: Gunslingr3
But in the years since Dr. Borlaug moved on to spread his methods to other villages, Fufuo has been sliding back toward mere subsistence.

Western governments and the development agencies they fund no longer countenance his methods or provide aid on a large scale to support them, as they once did. Instead, they say, the free market should determine how Africa feeds itself. The Ghanaian government, pressured by its Western creditors to keep its fiscal house in order, doesn't provide fertilizer subsidies, crop-price supports or other equivalent to the cheap financing Dr. Borlaug started the farmers on. Local banks charge 30% interest on loans.

So the villagers of Fufuo are skimping on fertilizer, and their plots are yielding a third less. Without a well-functioning market for their crops, they struggle to sell even these diminishing yields before they rot. The temptation grows to switch to cash crops such as cocoa and ginger to sell to the West, though with more than two million of its people undernourished, according to the United Nations, Ghana needs more of a food staple such as corn.

"We have shown we can produce more, but sometimes we wonder, 'What's the use?' " says Kwaku Owusu, a Fufuo corn farmer.

___________

Yeah, real simple. Africa is what Africans make it. There are no deeper issues here, nothing more complex than the inferiority of an entire race. < /sarcasm off >

Why don't you read the article again, this time without some preconceived, racist idea of what black Africans are all about? By the way, even American farmers get subsidies so they can afford to keep farming. This is not a simple, black and white (no pun intended) issue.

13 posted on 12/03/2002 7:48:37 AM PST by LibertyGirl77
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To: LibertyGirl77
Instead of calling others racist, perhaps you should take a peek at the threads on Zimbabwe. You know, that lovely place where a black communist thug has been murdering blacks and whites by the thousands: where "war veterans" turn productive lands that have fed many for years into trash heaps. The white farmers there are Mugabe's scapegoat. And Zimbabwe, instead of a net food producer, is having severe food shortages.

It's not racist to say that an African thug has ruined the lives of millions with his persecution of white farmers - it's a FACT.

14 posted on 12/03/2002 8:22:59 AM PST by jimt
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To: jimt; LibertyGirl77
What happened in Zimbabwe is disastrous and stupid. It is not racist to point it out, unless you presume to say that Mugabe behaved this way simply because he's black, as opposed to being simply a thug in power.

That said, I agree with LG77. The earlier post is racist and ugly.

15 posted on 12/03/2002 8:31:53 AM PST by wtc911
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To: LibertyGirl77
You are very good at vicious name calling, but if it were not for white farmers, NOBODY on here would be fed, not you, not me, not the Zulus in South Africa and not the Shonas in Rhodesia.

I notice you did not even bother to deny such an obvious fact, just engaged in abuse.

16 posted on 12/03/2002 9:17:46 AM PST by crystalk
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To: LibertyGirl77; Jonathon Spectre
Yeah, real simple. Africa is what Africans make it. There are no deeper issues here, nothing more complex than the inferiority of an entire race. < /sarcasm off >

Who said they're inferior? Plenty of white tree-huggers consider farm subsistence living the zenith of humanity. I stated a simple fact, Africa is what Africans made it. How is it racist to start with acknowledging that fact when analyzing any of their predicaments?

"We have shown we can produce more, but sometimes we wonder, 'What's the use?' " says Kwaku Owusu, a Fufuo corn farmer.

"I could go to work and create more wealth, but what's the use?" That's a hard mentality to overcome. If these people can't or won't grasp something as fundamental as capital accumulation, will they ever have wealth? We can pay for their fertilizer, even pay them not to farm like American farmers, "but what's the use?"

Why don't you read the article again, this time without some preconceived, racist idea of what black Africans are all about?

Who said anything about race? Why are you bringing it up? If I said America what Americans made it would that be racist? Someone not hyperfocused and 'sensitive' about race would see it as a reflection of American culture, not "whitey." Drop your scare word, it doesn't apply to me and I'm not scared.

By the way, even American farmers get subsidies so they can afford to keep farming. This is not a simple, black and white (no pun intended) issue.

I'm not in support of socialist redistribution of income regardless of whether the farmer is American or African. Just last week I posted an article concerning the fleecing of American consumers on the altar of politically connected farming constituents. The problem being faced by these farmers isn't international racism, it's being too dumb to quit pissing in the well bucket - even after they're told!

17 posted on 12/03/2002 9:19:15 AM PST by Gunslingr3
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To: jimt
It's not racist to say that an African thug has ruined the lives of millions with his persecution of white farmers - it's a FACT.

You're right. But that's not what crystalk said, is it?

18 posted on 12/03/2002 9:37:00 AM PST by LibertyGirl77
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To: Gunslingr3
Go back and read crystalk's post, and my response, which was the start of this debate. Crystalk seems to have a problem with the black race.
19 posted on 12/03/2002 9:37:58 AM PST by LibertyGirl77
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To: crystalk
...if it were not for white American farmers, NOBODY on here would be fed, not you, not me, not the Zulus in South Africa and not the Shonas in Rhodesia.

I promise you, there are black farmers in America. The problem is not racial -- it's cultural and political.

20 posted on 12/03/2002 9:41:22 AM PST by LibertyGirl77
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