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Ask Slashdot: How To Feed Africa?

Posted by Soulskill on from the infinite-gnutella dept.

gbrumfiel writes "Africa has some of the poorest soil of anywhere on the earth, and over farming is only making matters worse. As the population grows, governments and NGOs must decide whether to subsidize chemical fertilizers like those used in the west or promote more sustainable agricultural practices. In Malawi, the government has decided to subsidize fertilizers, with impressive results. Corn yields have tripled since the subsidies were introduced. More sustainable practices, such as fertilizer trees can't deliver those kind of results in just a few years. The question is simple: does Africa follow the same, unsustainable road as the rest of the world? Or do they become a testing ground for potentially game-changing new techniques? OR is there a third path? Discuss."

35 of 592 comments (clear)

  1. Stopped reading at... by gentryx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Africa has some of the poorest soils anywhere on the earth". Such a generic statement about a whole continent which contains huge portions of tropical rainforest and grassland is just wrong.

    --
    Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
    1. Re:Stopped reading at... by mosb1000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nevertheless, Africa is a whole continent. It has plenty of good farmland. Look at the US, most of it is "some of the poorest soil on earth." But the reality is you can still do a lot with it, using conventional farming techniques.

    2. Re:Stopped reading at... by intok · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Traditional farming techniques like tons of nitrite fertilizer and fresh water piped in from far off places? Thats not an option and it wasn't for allot of The Midwest during the 30's, look up the Dustbowl and how wind erosion destroyed allot of farmland here in the US and how it's destroying parts of China today. In many places there simply isn't enough water in the aquifers to just start pumping it out as 10 years down the line the region will have desertification due to all of the water that was trapped in the ground being sent downstream.

    3. Re:Stopped reading at... by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Newsflash. Rainforest is terrible soil.

      Newsflash. Africa is suffering desertification, and the grasslands are mostly deep sand.

      Here is what africa needs to do:

      Healthy, fertile arable soil is about 50 parts clay, 20 parts sand, and 30 parts organic sponge. The types of clay in the 50% clay figure are important.

      Parts of africa are loaded with clay and organic sponge. Parts of africa are loaded with sand.

      Get the african nations to stop fighting each other over tarot roots, and get them to ship dirt to each other.

      We have the technology to do this. It isn't hard. The benefits greatly outweigh the costs over time. Chemical fertilizers do not solve the soil nutrition and arability problems. Pouring miracle grow on sand won't help you for long.

      Trade big shipments of river silt (organic sponge), heavy clay, and washed sand. Plow it into unproductive fields that are suffering deficits.

      Watch shit fucking grow.

    4. Re:Stopped reading at... by wvmarle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While your solution for soil improvement may be technically correct (though you need lots and lots of shiploads of dirt to make it work), it's commercially impossible.

      The Africans themselves don't have money. Well not entirely true, there is a lot of money, but all in the hands of a few people who are not interested in sharing any of it. Subsidising such activities is difficult, as it's hard to prevent the money to end up in the wrong hands (i.e. those with a lot of money already, and only eager to get more).

      Finally, most Africancs are hungry RIGHT NOW. So they want food on the table RIGHT NOW. An instant solution is needed to solve that issue; only when they are fed RIGHT NOW they will be interested in thinking about being fed tomorrow, next week and next year. Artificial fertiliser can solve that part of the problem, but will need a more longer-term strategy to follow up.

    5. Re:Stopped reading at... by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem with quick easy fixes, is that people use them, then abuse them, and treat them like permanent ones.

      We nerds in IT should be well aware of this by now. How many "temporary fixes" have your employers twisted into permanent ones?

      Same thing here. There is money to be made. LOTS of money to be made, by *NOT* properly improving the soil. Shafting starving vllagers for miracle grow while the soil's mineral content dries up, leaving them with soil that won't even grow weeds in the rainy season is *VERY* profitable.

      That is why it must be avoided, and done right, if you really want the african people to not suffer.

    6. Re:Stopped reading at... by hairyfish · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Get the african nations to stop fighting each other

      Impossible. I was to going make some comments about the situation there but everything I wrote sounded racist. How do you address the fact that seems to be a clear pattern of behaviour in that continent that doesn't look like it will ever be solved while the locals are in charge?

    7. Re:Stopped reading at... by eggstasy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You don't get it. Imagine setting up a factory in a place without a stable power or water supply, decent roads, large enough ports, with a corrupt dictatorship, tribal warlords, gigantic wildlife and weird tropical diseases.
      It's slowly getting better in some places, but Africa is not ours to fix. We could build them roads, but how do we get our money back, tolls? They don't have enough cars for that. We could lend them money to build roads but it would be squandered by corrupt politicians who would default on the debt.
      It really has to be solved by them (think Arab Spring), unless you want to colonize the place again and develop it for your own people to use.
      Like I said, it's getting better in Angola, for instance, and all they had to do was to stop fighting their silly guerrillas and get a stable government. They're attracting lots of international investment nowadays.

    8. Re:Stopped reading at... by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Better is to provide them with food while they do the improvements. This way they don't become complacent and misuse chemical fertilizers as some kind of magic bullet.

      Agreed that they need to eat now. Disagree that introducing them to liquid fertilizers that cause collateral soil damage is the best temporary solution.

    9. Re:Stopped reading at... by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      to become your next competitor!

      And there you have it. The plain and simple reason why that is NOT happening and the plain and simple reason why the west is pressing on Africa to not use the same farming methods the west is using. We'd all like Africans not to starve, but only so they can be our customers. Teaching a man to fish sounds like a good idea until they fish well enough so they can undercut our own fishing industry. I'm not saying I agree with this, but it seems to be the reality for most charity money.

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    10. Re:Stopped reading at... by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So the USA is a third the size, with a third the population, but they are more than 3x richer ...the real issue

      Funny thing about "richer" - It only matters when participating in a larger economy, not when subsistence farming.

      Case in point, look at how the US's Great Depression affected varying regions of the country in radically different ways - The wealthy coastal cities, whose economies and interests had largely separated from agriculture, suffered horribly; Rural farming communities, by contrast, barely noticed anything had changed (and despite the ever-popular fairy-tale about the evil bankers foreclosing on the poor ignorant farmer, at the peak of the Great Depression they suffered a mere one tenth of the foreclosure rate we experienced just two years ago).


      So whether or not Africa has money only influences whether or not they can opt for our modern pathological approach to every problem - Buy their way out by importing expensive resources from "somewhere else". Problem with that approach, eventually you run out of money or somewhere-elses to exploit.

    11. Re:Stopped reading at... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Get the african nations to stop fighting each other over tarot roots, and get them to ship dirt to each other.

      You forget that there is no interest at all in making them stop. First world sells them guns and ammunition and gets cheap oil and diamonds.

    12. Re:Stopped reading at... by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was to going make some comments about the situation there but everything I wrote sounded racist. How do you address the fact that seems to be a clear pattern of behaviour in that continent that doesn't look like it will ever be solved while the locals are in charge?

      Race != Culture.

      You want to solve Africa's problems? Take the damned place over and set up a modern Western-style central government.

      Gee, does that sound a bit too much like colonialism? Hey, guess what, Africa's colonial period counts as the only part of its history (post-Egypt, itself an exception due to the Nile and Mediterranean) where it had any meaningful level of economic output. You might argue that it only managed that by exploiting the local populations... But, if others can make money exploiting you, you can "exploit" yourself for the same gain!

      Quit fighting each other over petty crap, clean up the water, focus on better using what resources you have (Yes, parts of Africa has some of the worst soil in the world - It also has enough arable land to feed its entire population with plenty of room for growth), and join the modern world. On the flip side of that, when you regularly make the "look, point, and laugh" headlines for burning witches over stealing your penises... Not a sign of good things to come.

    13. Re:Stopped reading at... by petman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why argue about the soil? It's a red herring, if you ask me. You can find crops for any type of soil, even pure sand. The real problem is fresh water.

      --
      Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
    14. Re:Stopped reading at... by BasilBrush · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They think differently, no matter how much BS the Greens and Liberals tell you - people in the 3rd world do NOT think or act like YOU.

      All homo-sapiens brains work in the same way. So yes they do think the same way. They have experiences, different cultural references and so on that means in the same situation they might make different decisions. But then in whatever your country is, on any question, people will have a range of often diametrically opposing views.

      As to corruption, it's not a result of different thinking. There is corruption in every country where people are allowed to get away with it. Government officials everywhere are bribed. Just this week we've seen David Cameron the prime minister of the UK secretly making himself available for private consultations over lunch with anyone who can come up with £250,000.

      I'm not sure exactly what it is that you claiming the "greens and liberals" are saying that is wrong. But clearly your racist thoughts are very wrong.

    15. Re:Stopped reading at... by dkleinsc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How many "temporary fixes" have your employers twisted into permanent ones?

      Hence one of my laws of IT: There ain't no such thing as a "temporary solution" - if it works, it becomes permanent. If it doesn't work, it's not a solution.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    16. Re:Stopped reading at... by sonoftheright · · Score: 3, Insightful

      MFW Ghana, Eritrea are amongst the fastest growing real GDPs in the world. "Quit fighting"? "Join the modern world"? Most of the stunted growth everyone is referring to here is due to an overabundance of liquid assets - food, money, medication - being reappropriated by force and placed into the hands of oppressors; the individuals stuck in these sustained power vacuums can't help but face the problems of the here and now. Their only thought is to see the next sunrise. While in that state, they have no luxury to educate themselves or produce goods to compete, let alone innovate. Trade the subsidies and all forms of monetary aid for micro-loaning schemes meant to support individuals and individual small businesses, and you will give locals an alternative to the force-driven monopoly that is sustainable and promotes growth. Starve the cancerous militia and the people will have the motivation and the inspiration to provide alternatives.

    17. Re:Stopped reading at... by mdarksbane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Aid money is destroying Africa. There's no need to work on a functioning social or government organizations when you can stay in power perfectly well just off of what's getting shipped to you from the West.

      Most government budgets in Africa treat aid as a core part of their income - some as much as 50%. They don't use it to cover short term shortfalls, they expand spending to use everything. And these are the governments that are actually using the money and not just pocketing it.

      "We" (we being the west) cannot fix Africa short of turning it into east Carolina. They need to come up with their own functional modes of government and funding, whatever those are, on their own. The people have no chance when their local tinpot dictators are being propped up by someone with 100x their power and economy.

    18. Re:Stopped reading at... by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This Anonymous Coward makes two very good points. There have been several studies that show that the basis for a society becoming more wealthy from top to bottom is having a government based on rule of law where the laws change slowly and apply mostly the same to everyone from top to bottom. An additional factor to that is that property has clear title and the mechanism for transferring ownership of land from one person to another is relatively easy to execute. Both of these situations are deteriorating in the U.S. and that deterioration is playing a significant role in our current economic problems.

      The second point he makes sounds racist the way he stated it, but it is not necessarily so (I do not know if he meant it in a racist way or not). He is correct that most people in 3rd world countries do not think or act like people in developed nations. This is not biological. It is not a product of their "race". It is cultural. They have learned to think the way they do because that is how things work in the countries they live in. They can learn to think and act differently. Of course, this does not mean that there are no aspects about the way that people in developing nations think that would improve the lives of those in developed nations were to learn to think that way.
      I have worked with an organization that works with the extremely poor in several developing nations. It was amazing to see what a difference was made over time because the leader of the organization dealt with the local governments assuming that once the rules were made, they would not change arbitrarily. The leader knew that such was not traditionally the case, but she was able to establish such a reputation with the locals that they were embarrassed to not live up to her expectations. Of course it also worked because she worked with those at the other end showing them that if they worked within the system, they would make more progress than if they went outside it. It also only worked because she limited the size of the organization to where she could establish a personal relationship with people at various levels.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    19. Re:Stopped reading at... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You should look into the Dust Bowl. My grandparents (children during the Great Depression) were so scarred by the experience that they lived in a $3000 house and rarely spent money for anything (wearing shoes til you could see through them) saving like crazy their entire lives, even when they had saved nearly a million dollars.

      Farmers suffer from 2 things... poor climate/crops and poor commodities markets. The Dust Bowl was the former and the Great Depression was the latter. They only made it because of extreme poverty of lifestyle... things I, 3 generations removed, can barely comprehend.

  2. Solution by larppaxyz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Birth control.

    1. Re:Solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      or just stop feeding them. let the population adjust naturally to the food supply. keep on feeding them with no infrastructure = more starving people not less.

  3. the bigger problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about not growing the population in an area that can't sustain it? Our whole planet is going to have to do this at some point unless there's some sort of breakthrough. Is it really too early to start talking about managing population growth or are we still so blind that we can't distinguish between human rights and long term survival?

    1. Re:the bigger problem by dwywit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why "troll"? Abortion should be safe, legal, and these days EXTREMELY RARE. If all our children were given adequate access to education and when of a suitable age, access to birth control, I think abortion rates (and over-population) would become less and less.
       
      One man's opinion, obviously.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  4. I KNOW!! by HaeMaker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about we let the Africans decide! What a CONCEPT! Self determination!

  5. For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid! by little1973 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

    --
    Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
    1. Re:For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid! by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In addition to that article, I'd add that there's a strong inverse correlation between economic development and population growth. The vast majority of population growth is in developing countries. Industrialized nations have close to zero and in some cases negative population growth. Food, clean water, and medicinal aid to developing countries may be well-intentioned, but it's just exacerbating the problem. Families which would've stopped after x babies continue to have more offspring because of the availability of food and water. Africans who would've died of starvation or disease survive, adding to a population which isn't sustainable with the infrastructure that's present there.

      We're tackling the problem backwards. Instead of treating the symptoms, we need to be treating the problem. First and foremost, we need to be helping African nations build an economic base. Help the countries there establish stable governments conducive to economic growth, develop educational structures to provide a skilled workforce, and provide economic assistance to help them start up their own businesses and trade. Once you get the economic ball rolling, they will build their own fresh water wells and distribution system; they will build their own farms and irrigation canals; they will build their own hospitals and train their own doctors. Doing it the way we're doing - providing food, water, and medicine for free - is just increasing their population while killing what economies they have. We're stunting their economic growth while simultaneously moving the goalpost of economic self-sustainability further away.

  6. How about we just stop "helping" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Africa is perfectly capable of growing enough food to feed its people. Many nations are capable of growing enough food to export the surplus. The problems are distribution, largely related to corruption and violence. It seems nearly everything we do just makes it worse. The free food shipments have a list of unintended consequences long enough to terrify you. It simultaneously props up the craven warlords that don't like us while depressing the prices for locally grown food so the farmers can't sell any excess they might grow for the tools that they need to buy the tools the need to continue to farm, much less other life expenses like clothes. Tools and clothes wear out, and if you destroy the local economies with our generousity, it does not help these people. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the old saying goes. And hell, I'm not the only one saying it. Good intentions don't matter. Bad results do.

  7. Supply and Demand Growth by sociocapitalist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is immaterial how much can be grown so long as there is no widespread use of contraception. The more food grown, the more mouths there will be demanding the food grown.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  8. One word. by Cosgrach · · Score: 2, Insightful

    CONDOMS.

    --
    Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
  9. For Mozambique ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's time to change your government

    Mozambique should not be a poor country - look at the resources your country has

    Mozambique is poor because of the mismanagement of the government

    --
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    1. Re:For Mozambique ... by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mozambique IS because of the great powers that carved up Africa at the end of the nineteenth century chose it to be.

      African countries have at least three problems, two of them internal and one external. The internal problems are that they were given (or in some cases took independence) without any significant attempts to create an educated elite, and that their boundaries are not based on culture. For examples of the latter, look at Nigeria with its Christian coastal dwellers and Islamic folk inland, or the current problems in Mali with the Toureg in the north fighting for independence. Also note how Sudan and Ethiopia have both had civil war and been split in the last decade or so, both along religious or ethic lines.

      The external problem is that both political and commerical interests benefit from African states being badly run. There was much jostling over the African states during the cold war, and it is much easier to deal with a dictator or bribe a government when you are after the many resources Africa has to offer rather than have to deal with the vagaries of public opinion.

      And let's not forget that some of these nations have had independence for less than 50 years (1974 in the case of Mozambique).

      Anyone interested in reading up on the carving up of Africa might want to take a look at Thomas Pakenham - The Scramble for Africa.

    2. Re:For Mozambique ... by alaffin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While Western Imperialism did not help Mozambique in any way, to say that the poverty of African nations is a result of Imperialism is misguided. Ethiopia is a good example of this. It was only recently (the mid-20th century) and very briefly (1936-1944) brought under the control of a proper empire. For most of the rest of its history is has been a monarchy and has always had the potential to be fairly affluent - the soils there are quite fertile compared to neighbouring nations and the nation sits high above much of the rest of Africa making it the source for a dozen or so major rivers. However the nation is a poorly organized communist society - so very little of its fertile land is irrigated by its vast water reserves and it is usually one drought away from disaster.

      Are there things we could do to make things easier for Ethiopia? Sure. Because of her robust economies anything the west does has significant effects on the rest of the world. However there are many contributing factors to the poor economies of Africa, many of which have more to do with the people and the governments of these nations than anything the western world has done. Compare Ethiopia and Mozambique to Botswana, which gained independence in 1966 and was, at the time, the poorest country in Africa. Now it has a robust economy and the 2nd highest GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa (after Seychelles).

  10. Guns and Contraceptive Pills by Leo+Sasquatch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Take the guns away from the men and give the pills to the women. Accept the fact that it's going to take a couple of generations to stabilise, and there is no quick fix. In many places, the problems seem to be not poor soil, or lack of rain, but the fact that around harvest time, some asswipe rolls up in a jeep with a bunch of his buttboys and helps himself to whatever he fancies.

    Accept the ugly truth that inter-uterine and infant malnutrition can directly and permanently affect brain growth. Unlike many other parts of the body, which seem able to recover, if sufficient food is presented later, the brain doesn't seem to recover. Entire areas have been hit by famine, whether caused by weather conditions or the janjaweed militia, and the damage is clear and permanent, and won't go away overnight no matter how much food you ship in.

    With no appropriate infrastructure, a lot of aid ends up wasted, damaged, or just diverted to whichever local asswipe has the most guns. Aid needs to be specific. I saw a TED talk on the amazing water-purifier bottle - he scooped up some filthy muck, gave it a couple of pumps, and out came pure water. A truckload of those in the right place would probably do some good. I also remember hearing about a village where the thing that made the most difference to their food supply was teaching the local craftsman to make catapults. The local monkeys would help themselves to the crops and they lost around 30% of their crop each year. They gave the local boys catapults, so they could hit the monkeys with stones without getting too close. The problem cleared right up, as the monkeys learned that going anywhere near the fields got them nothing but a sharp stone at high speed.

    The problems are not insurmountable, but they are huge in scope. Getting people to give a shit for extended periods of time might be the largest challenge of all.

    1. Re:Guns and Contraceptive Pills by retroworks · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Give guns to the women, condoms to the men. That's how we tamed the wild west in the USA. It was ugly for awhile, and we still have some gun culture because of it. But as guns became small enough for women to carry and hide, men had to factor in that she might be packing heat, and thought twice. Handgun distribution to mothers in Uganda might do more to stop Kony than anything else. And the pill does nothing for AIDS, cheap condoms are better. (No, I'm not a troll).

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