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Comments
We were discussing another great piece on the realities of African science and agriculture on James' blog the other day:
Dr. Gebisa Ejeta on Investing in Agriculture
If you haven't read Ejeta's testimony before Congress earlier this year, you should.
Posted by: Mary | November 19, 2009 9:28 AM
Organic farming worked for the people of Hansel and Gretel's generation.
Posted by: History Punk | November 19, 2009 1:41 PM
@History Punk: not the dead ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansel_and_gretel
Posted by: Mary | November 19, 2009 2:16 PM
Mary, given History Punk's focus, that may rather have been his point in mentioning Hansel and Gretel.
Posted by: MadGastronomer | November 19, 2009 2:31 PM
@ Mary
Well, thanks for explaining it anyway, because I didnt get History Punk's reference. I had no idea about the story's origins.
Posted by: Hinemoana | November 19, 2009 9:20 PM
Ummmm I don't think updated ports and power stations are going to "fix" sub-Saharan Africa.
Perhaps a little historical deconstruction of our own agricultural revolution would be a start.
For example:
CoOps that include one designated seed producer/breeder for every 200 or so production farmers so that there is a trend towards highly tailored climate tolerant and pest resistant plants and secure marketable seed/grain storage.
Farm to market roads because unless you can take the surplus to people who will buy it there is no reason for growing it.
Of course for advancing these propositions, how about we choose a word other than 'Peasants' for describing the people we want to assist?
Posted by: Prometheus | November 20, 2009 2:10 PM
P.S. for History Punk
There is certainly the leitmotif of the infant abandoned due to plague/ famine /strife who wins the lottery in some way....(Hansel and Gretel find treasure in the witch's house after they kill her). These stories are told as a salve to parents forced to expose their children since Moses in the bullrushes.
In a way though Hansel and Gretel is a weirder story and it involves a battle over food and business so........
Hansel and Gretel started as a parody of an industrialist who was generally despised for getting away with Murder.
Katharina Schraderin was a court baker turned entrepreneur and the chief competition for Hans Metzler who ran the early 17th century equivalent of Nabisco in Nuremberg. He attempted to marry her to acquire her bakery and when that failed he accused her of witchcraft (Die Bakkerhexe) legally entitling him to her property if she was found guilty.
She was exonerated, moved her operation to an isolated location (in the woods) where she could make and ship Lebkuchen to market. Metzler tracked her down, stole her cook book, killed her and burned her body in her oven. When caught, he claimed again that she was a witch and this time added cannibalism to the accusation. When his sister Margaret ‘Grete’ Metzler backed up his story as the only witness, he was declared not guilty.
Metzler grew rich and fat making cookies with his wonderful new gingerbread recipe.
This was uncovered in the Wernigerode archive in the late sixties by a fascinatingly odd autodidactic archeologist named Georg Ossegg.
That's right...Prometheus was a historian once. I don't know why I remember so much junk like this. I'm betting I spelled all of the names wrong.
Posted by: Prometheus | November 20, 2009 3:50 PM
Prometheus,
There should be a term to make it clear clear how little we think of the lifestyle so many subsistence farmers are forced to remain in around the world, without sounding like we're denigrating the people themselves.
Peasants isn't it, but I'm not sure what is.
Posted by: James | November 20, 2009 8:48 PM
I'm not convinced that peasants isn't pretty accurate:-
"a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank."
I guess possibly as Africa is excluded from the classification perhaps - but it appears to be an accurate description of subsistance farmers - and the negative implication merely reflects that it is not a mode of life which should be wished on anyone.
Posted by: Ewan R | November 20, 2009 10:02 PM
Maybe the Hansel and Gretel analogy is a good one, if you are the witch.
Read it again and ask; if everyone else is going hungry, how come you're living in a house made of gingerbread? Recall the irish potato famine. People going hungry while the corn exports were continuing.
Posted by: eddie | November 21, 2009 3:22 PM