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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."
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?
#GATEGATE
Bolivia already produces 115 million chickens a year. The country is not first world by any measure, but people are not starving to death on the streets either.
Keeping our citizens at the brink of starvation is how we maintain power. Increasing access to food weakens our political position.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Who doesn't like chicken?
You're mistaken. The lack of funny and lack of sense does not arise from you being new.
Well, I'm sure they really would have taken them, but the customs paperwork is just SO unpleasant, you know? And there is the matter of the 17% import duty on livestock, and there needs to be proof that someone will feed and house the chickens so that they don't become a burden on society. We can't have foreign chickens just coming into the country whenever they want.
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
Arise cheeken.
Arise.
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.
The leftist government of Bolivia, "He [Bill Gates] 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..."
Silly Bill Gates, maybe he should give them 100,000 fertilized eggs instead?
The theory (I'll call this The Theory) goes like this: If you give free food to Africa, you'll price out African farmers who will starve because they have nothing else to do. And then the people will starve when you stop donating food.
That complaint seriously misses the point. Let me tell you why: African farmers don't need to farm. They need to do something that pays for what they need. Any work will do, really. As long as an unskilled person can do it. So there are three possibilities here: Industrialization is impossible for African nations (so there can't be other work) OR there isn't enough investment to drive industry (so the farmers can't get other work) OR technological unemployment now makes unskilled work insufficiently profitable to support a person.
Now African farmers are already doing something otherwise (effectively entirely) done by machine in first world countries. A farm in Europe requires far, far less human labor. A European farmer's job is more in the line of managing machines, scheduling planting, organizing finances, and so forth. You won't see him on his knees weeding a patch of land. You won't see him with a scythe in his hand at harvest time. You won't even see him helping a pig give birth or tending a sick cow* An EU farm averages "...an average size of 16.1 hectares per agricultural holding. An average EU farm has less than one person see here. 12 million farms, 10 million farmers.
If the above theory about farmers going out of work is to be believed then it's impossible for farming to make up a significant percentage of employment. Otherwise the complaint would be invalid. So the farming singularity has not arrived in Africa. I'm going to beg the question that a strong industrial economy and a service economy also haven't, I think it's obvious. This leaves the third possible support for The Theory completely without support. In Africa unskilled labor can still pay what passes for a living wage. On to the first possibility.
The statistics here tell us that Africa has averaged a 3 to 6 percent increase in GDP for the last decade. This is despite AIDS, Malaria, pants-on-head retarded or just evil actions by African politicians, revolutionary wars, and otherwise being the unwashed asshole of the world. More to the point, this increase represents industrialization. For evidence see this economic diversification report.
It may not be enough yet, or even certain but it is happening.
Going back to africaneconomicoutlook.org if we look at table 10, foreign direct investment we see that the middle objection to food exports to Africa is quite strong. Africa has averaged 51 billion dollars per year of direct foreign investment. For a whole continent that's shockingly small. As shown by continual growth through massive problems... problems that are going away one by one, Africa is at the cusp of a new era. All that needs to be done is entice a rational amount of foreign investment (say, 400 billion dollars per year) by parties interested in money, not power (actual economic investment, not strings-attached economic manipulation) and it will industrialize at a clip only seen so far in China's rise to power.
If that happens:
1. The Theory's complaint will be rendered moot very quickly by African farmers reaching par for productivity.
2. Food can be freely given on the basis that the vast majority of
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Look at least he is not trying to give them Windows 10, that would really be insulting.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A part of adult & children in the US are malnourished. No, seriously it is estimated by the same definitions that about 6 millions adults and 3 millions children are malnourished.
Come on, Bill. Your best response was NO response but instead you had to make a snarky, self-important blog post. You've never been hungry or poor in your whole life, even before Microsoft and therefore have no standing to dole out criticism.
Hopefully they didn't click the Red Cross to say thanks but no thanks for your chickens because they will probably get delivered anyway...
just crashed. Thanks Obama
Gently reply
I doubt that raise chickens in the altiplano is a good idea. The most poor population in Bolivia are the altiplano over 3000 m. about sea level. If they did a real field check of the plan they would be donating Llamas or Alpacas and Tools needed for fiber produce.
He does not know Bolivia's reality
If Bill Gates knows nothing of Bolivia, it is probably from using Bing.
I'd hazard a guess that it is Bolivia's government he knows little about, more so than Bolivia itself.
I thought those chickens could fly'
Some years ago Evo Morales said that chickens were full of feminine hormones and are the cause of homosexuality.
Texas produces 5 billion chickens a year, and it could still use a gift of 100,000 chickens to poor and unemployed who could get some income out of raising them. As if often happens, pride and politics are getting in the way of helping some people :(.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Bolivia has plenty of chickens. This is a tiny amount for them; furthermore, just about anybody can afford to buy some chicks and start on their own. If he wanted to help the poor with chickens he'd provide education on raising them and maybe some chicken feed... It's incredibly ignorant to think that giving any group of people on earth free chickens is going to greatly benefit them.
Next we'll hear about Gates giving poor Hindus cows or drilling water wells in the Amazon or providing winter coats to north Africans or high-tech toilets...(anybody remember that one?)
If it must be food related, get people willing to eat insects like grasshoppers and show the how to raise those...
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To buy a chicken you need to spend anything from 4 to 12 hours in a line. A donation like that would help, but sadly i think it would be rejected by the government as well.
We desperately need food and medicines and countries have tried to help, but the government doesn't allow it
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"With God as my witness, I thought chickens could fly"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know for a fact that guys that operate the machines that create everyone's CPU's have chickens. Here in USA. And I know those guys wouldn't say no to some extra free chickens. This is obviously a political move by people in power that care nothing about their own people.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
But it's actually starting to get funny, just because it makes no sense whatsoever.
or maybe my brain is just melting. Hard to tell.
I've had some interest in an indigenous Southern African breed of chicken called Boschvelders. They have been from 3 indigenous varieties, which through natural selection have become adapted to a very rural environment. As a result, the resulting breed is reported to do exceptionally well in the local Souther African climate, is very hardy and resistant to illness, and can survive and even produce on no additional feed, only what is foraged in the sometimes less-than-ideal environment. The birds' temperament is reported to be quite human-friendly (tame), the eggs produced are highly prized, and the birds seem to be naturally resistant to predators (good evasion instincts).
The point that I want to get to is that even though these birds look excellent on paper, they are adapted to a certain environment. I have my doubts that they would necessarily do well in a cooler northern-hemisphere country with different climate, ground, food sources and where they probably will be confined to laying batteries... And vice versa: if some well-to-do charity goes and dumps thousands of birds that are the preferred commercial variety in the charity's country of origin (meaning probably an easy supply), they just might not do as well in a different climate and environment. Many of the traits that are desirable in a variety are inbred, from mothering instincts to laying capacity to size to growth and the pros and cons of various breeds are endlessly discussed. Now imagine a locally adapted breed being flooded with unadapted genetics... In the long run, selection may of course again run its course - but in the short run, this might just lead to some drastic and hopefully unintended disasters (or conceded, all might just run without problems and only with benefits).
Still: why presumably import chickens? Why not set up breeding facilities to increase the numbers of local varieties - on location?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Bolivia cried fowl over Gates' plan.
E
Is it bad that Slashdot is giving us Stockholm Syndrome?
Looking gift chickens in the mouth?
Regardless of whether you feel it's in an insult, dude - free chickens.
It's my understanding this was offered to poor countries in general, not directly any country, let alone Bolivia. So is Bolivia offended that they have to not fill out the donation paperwork for chickens in order to not get said chickens? Or they offended that there's a donation out there that they don't need, therefor cannot take advantage of? Either way, Bolivia needs to get over it and just not take the chickens instead of bitching about something other countries can and will use.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
It's not the first time Gates laid an egg, or got some on his face. If he wasn't so cooped up and henpecked, maybe him and Buffet could figure out a better plan...birds of a feather and all that.
I'm here all week folks.
Just another day in Paradise
The real cow guy would never joke about inserting the word "chickens" so it's obviously a copy-chicken, a funny one!
Socialism!
i am so very tired....
Nobody mentioned that the surname of the minister of land and rural development (Cocarico) sounds like the sound of a rooster wake up?
I guess they skipped diplomatic school. The right answer was - "Thanks for the offer. We're doing fine. Please offer them to someone else." Like a civilized society/government would do.
Not the crazy whacko leftist reaction we see.
Never know when Bill may be able to help them in the future. Maybe he would have offered them medical help or other stuff they could use. Don't be that ungrateful child.
if they had provided a interest free deferred loan for the chickens and/or farm equipment. That way it doesn't come off as either charity or yet another white man knowing what a country needs.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Why can't Gates just set up a Lottery system and give them couple of US dollars directly e.g. https://www.givedirectly.org/e...
Casteism