[decimon]

The best help would be to drop trade barriers/tariffs.

[DB]

They’re right. The local producers can’t compete with free stuff. That puts them out of business making everyone else more dependent on free stuff. Just more heart of mind thinking that has bad consequences.

[muawiyah]

Let's recognize something here first. The CARE argument on behalf of small farmers in the local area is the SAME argument made in the United Kingdom in the face of the first major famines in Ireland.

To "protect the price of corn" the Brits allowed a government administrator to disallow the import of food for starving people.

I think the CARE administrator who came up with that argument should be dealt with roughly and sent away.

[Texas Eagle]

Other experts said they share CARE's concern, but stressed that food donations are sometimes needed when a natural disaster harms a local area's agriculture, such as the flooding that North Korea says has devastated vast tracts of its farmland.

Are the people at CARE under the impression that Nairobi, Kenya is in North Korea?

[Billthedrill]

I have broad sympathy with this view - local farmers competing with free (to their customers) product can't make enough to get to the next season. The difficulty with cash grants, however, is that they are far more likely than food to end up lining the pockets of the incredibly corrupt distribution systems in most of these countries. That ends up helping nobody.

And strangely, once the corruption ends the need for aid seems to end along with it. Funny how that works out.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

This is the same thing that has happened with the clothing industry there.

Free used clothes are basically dumped into the local markets which put the tailors out of business.

The same thing happens with the food market. The small farmers grow enough for themselves and a bit for market. But it is impossible to sell what you have grown when there is a surplus of a higher quality lower cost product already there. The end result is that people do not have enough cash to buy the things they can not grow.

[hinckley buzzard]

The program soaks up surplus farm production, and shippers get lucrative contracts to transport donated grain for sale in needy regions.

Here is the "money quote", the real reason we dump cheap "charity" food on underdeveloped nations. Has nothing to do with "Aid" except to US shippers and farmers.

[BwanaNdege]

In Kenya people die in a drought/famine because their crop has failed. The famine of 1980-81 was caused by a number of things:

1) The rains failed.
2) There was not engough storage capacity for the 1978-79 bumper harvest.
3) The Kenya government would not admit to shortages until 3 months into FAMINE and did not admit famine until 5 months into severe famine.
4) The Kenya government continued to sell the bumper harvest on the international market for hard currency even after it admitted there was famine. This included selling off the “strategic reserve”.
5) Some Kenyans would not eat USAID donated maize meal because it was yellow corn. Kenyans are used to white maize meal. They believed that the USAID maize was yellow because the US had treated it with “contraceptives to prevent Kenya from having lots of children and being as strong as the US”.

African govenments want cash donations because 20%, 30%, 50% (pick a number) is skimmed off the top by corrupt governments.

[JohnLongIsland]

the bottom line is the united nations is holding out for more extortion money from CARE.

[calex59]

A book, "The Ugly American" outlined this problem and had the solution to it. This book was written in the 1950s I believe, or early 1960s. Forget the author, however, it envolved sending help in the way of expertise and experience, by sending the ugly American in to teach people how to fend for themselves.

I may not be remembering the book exactly but the basic idea was that by sending people to teach the poor farmers HOW to farm better, more could be accomplished and they would become self sufficient.

The way things stand now these countries are in a circle that will never end.

I believe it has been said best with this statement: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". I know this is an old and often quoted statement but it remains true.

[MEGoody]

Show us the money!