Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates' Donation of Thousands of Chickens Rejected by Bolivia (theverge.com)
HughPickens.com shares an article from The Verge: Bill Gates' philanthropic efforts are usually greeted with near-universal praise, but a recent attempt by the US billionaire to donate 100,000 chickens ruffled some feathers. The leftist government of Bolivia...has refused the donation, describing Gates' gift as "offensive." "He does not know Bolivia's reality to think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce," said Cesar Cocarico [Bolivia's minister of land and rural development]... "Respectfully, he should stop talking about Bolivia, and once he knows more, apologize to us."
Gates' "Coop Dreams" initiative partnered with Heifer International, a group which fights poverty by delivering livestock and agricultural training, to deliver 100,000 chickens around the world, mostly to sub-Saharan Africa, as a way to improve the lives of people making $2 a day. In a blog post Gates noted that chickens are cheap and easy to take care, while selling flocks of chickens can be a profitable business, and raising chickens offers other benefits to children and families. "Our foundation is betting on chickens..." Gates writes, adding "if I were in their shoes, that's what I would do -- I would raise chickens."
Gates' "Coop Dreams" initiative partnered with Heifer International, a group which fights poverty by delivering livestock and agricultural training, to deliver 100,000 chickens around the world, mostly to sub-Saharan Africa, as a way to improve the lives of people making $2 a day. In a blog post Gates noted that chickens are cheap and easy to take care, while selling flocks of chickens can be a profitable business, and raising chickens offers other benefits to children and families. "Our foundation is betting on chickens..." Gates writes, adding "if I were in their shoes, that's what I would do -- I would raise chickens."
Happened in Africa with food aid. What do you think the effect on an agrarian economy would be if you came in and flooded the market with free food?
Misguided and ill-informed on the part of BG or his advisors, sure - but well-intentioned, and the response was a bit ungracious. Perhaps something along the lines of "Thanks, but we don't really need them. Please send the chickens to country x, and we'd rather have some solar panels or well pumps, or how about some internet infrastructure for our schools?"
That's probably a different scale of funding, but BG has $$$ to spare.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Not sure if chickens are the right thing to deliver, but Bolivia certainly does not know how to feed their population properly: https://www.wfp.org/stories/10... or http://www.unicef.org/bolivia/... I am always baffled, when pride is willing to kill people.
That's probably a different scale of funding, but BG has $$$ to spare.
True, but Bill Gates has been trying to apply his business principles to his philanthropy. Okay, maybe not the best way to put it, but to put it roughly, he's been trying to utilize his time to determine where putting his money will be the most effective. Basically, he's a venture capitalist donator. Give him a good enough pitch and business plan and get money.
Given the number of positive things I've heard about his donations, I figure that this is one of his rare screwups. Or, more accurately, it's a screwup by one of the charities that Bill Gates decided to give money and a positive statement to.
That being said - considering Venezuela, without doing any research I'd have to ask whether they're simply being prideful.
I don't read AC A human right
It's Bolivia not Venezuela, you ignorant american!
Also, those were probably GMO chickens he was trying to donate. Third world people usually don't take kindly to them.
I know this took place in Bolivia, but I'm using Venezuela as an example of where officials are willing to cut their own country's throat to save some face.
Bolivia is another country where appearances matter more than reality to the government. Bolivia as a whole is not as poor as many countries in Africa, but there are still some very poor people who would benefit from this gift. Instead of refusing it out of pride, maybe Morales should let the individual families decide for themselves.
Disclaimer: I am a non-poor American, and I have chickens (six leghorn laying hens). Chickens are very easy to care for, and mine live mostly on table scraps, garden waste, and bugs.
Maduro would have just claimed it was another gringo plot to unstablize his workers paradise. Then he'll claim anyone accepting one of these Yankee chickens would be investigated for terrorist leanings.
Venezuela is best left to the Venezuelans. I think of it as a drug addict, it must hit rock bottom before it will accept any sort change.
You are ignorant as **. If they produce 150 million chickens a year as claimed, even the poorest of them should be able to spare a few cents, buy a few chicks and raise them at home if thats what they want.
The reason they don't do it already is because like in most countries, the population is mostly urban and raising chickens in cities is an unsanitary hell and a huge health hazard. Don't just believe my words, get a dozen of chicks and try raising them in your house and give us your thoughts after a year.
Given the number of positive things I've heard about his donations,
That's odd, everything I've heard about his donations has been negative. When he gives health care, it's to strengthen big pharma. You can't get it unless your nation agrees to give strong IP protection to them. When he gives education, it's to create more IT professionals, but it doesn't really improve general education, and usually it actually harms it by drawing attention (and funding) away from initiatives which are actually meaningful. So what positive things have you been hearing about the donations of the Gates foundation?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's odd, everything I've heard about his donations has been negative.
That's called confirmation bias. You hate him, so you only seek, find, remember, and pass along information that allows you to feel good about that position. Maybe you should check with someone who doesn't have malaria, but otherwise would. Or someone in a developing country that has unprecedented education opportunities they'd otherwise have missed out on. They'd question your priorities. Ask someone in Cameroon, who literally went from rural village life to being a well paid consultant in a rapidly growing tech-centric urban economy if they'd rather the Gates Foundation had closed up shop. I know, you think it's either apocryphal, or that whatever strings are attached are too onerous. Having had just such a formerly impoverished rural boy from Cameroon move in as the young man next door, and watch him, over the course of just a few years, buy three houses in the neighborhood for his extended family (the children of which rotate through schools in Europe and trips back to Africa to further broaden their horizons), I think your smug disdain for the Gates Foundation is a bit of Shakespearean protesting too much. What's the problem, really? Just frustrated that it's not the Clinton Foundation that my Cameroonian friend praises for wildly improving the lives of nearly everyone in his large family?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is interesting to me. I've been considering getting some chickens, but other family members who have them say they're actually quite expensive to feed, and argue that the resulting eggs, while good, are far more expensive than those from the grocery store. What's your take?
You are NOT going to save money unless you consider your time to be worthless. You can't compete with factory farms. You should just think of it as more of a hobby. Here are some benefits:
1. You will have fresh eggs everyday. More in the summer but a few even in the winter. Roughly 300 eggs/year/hen.
2. Your kids will learn that food doesn't come from factories, and they will learn responsibility.
3. You will know that your eggs came from humanely treated chickens, and not from a warehouse of hens crammed into battery cages. Go visit a factory farm. The stench alone will make you never want to eat store-bought eggs again.
4. They will eat almost anything, including watermelon rinds, apple cores, carrot peels, etc. and convert all of that into protein nodules. You will still need to supplement that with some commercial feed.
5. The eggs taste much better, especially if they have access to a lot of insects and worms. I use a pitchfork to turn over part of the compost heap so they can get to the wrigglers.
6. When the zombie apocalypse comes you can feed the human corpses to your chickens, or if you prefer, you can let the bodies decompose and feed the maggots to your hens. You will survive while others starve.
That's nice. So what about the money they spend on advertising and marketing?
What about it? Do you own a business, or work for one? Have you considered how well you'd fare if nobody was allowed to promote your business or try to find new customers, or remind people why your product or service is a good alternative to something else? Do you understand that private companies have to actually generate revenue or they can't do anything, because they'll be bankrupt?
Actually, Medicare is a financing program that pays private providers, not a health care provider itself.
Except in order to use that financing program, you have to find doctors and facilities that are willing (usually at a financial loss) to conduct their operations and even their patient-by-patient, case-by-case decision making and prioritization according to Medicare's rules. That generally results in doctors losing money, which brings us to...
However, in terms of overhead, it's quite as good as any number of private providers of insurance and better than many.
No, it's not. It's rife with fraud and waste. Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth.
But the VA? For all the complaints about it, it has high satisfaction rates when it comes to care
Once you GET care. Or IF you get care.
IOW, good stewardship of your tax dollars. Do you want to change that?
Good stewardship of my tax dollars would have seen at least ONE person lose their job over the truly terrible conditions and processes exposed year after year as third parties and the VA itself review how awfully run the agency is. Vets waiting months and years to be seen. Do you understand that?
It's more cost effective to get Bill Gates to stop.
Yeah, better to just let all of that medical care and education grind to a halt. You hate him so much you'd rather see other people suffer than see them enjoy a shred of improvement through the billions of dollars his foundation spends on helping people. If the goal is to express your hatred, then yes, it might indeed be more efficient to let a lot of people die or go without education just to give you the satisfaction of shutting him down. In the meantime, why aren't YOU providing health care and education through your own foundation? Be specific.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.