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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."
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.
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.
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.