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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."
#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.
You're mistaken. The lack of funny and lack of sense does not arise from you being new.
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.
Thems the brakes.
We can't have foreign chickens just coming into the country whenever they want.
Aren't chickens on the "no fly" list already anyway . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
What do you think the effect on an agrarian economy would be if you came in and flooded the market with free food?
This would not "flood the market". 100,000 chickens is less than 0.1% of Bolivia's annual chicken production, and only a small portion of the 100K chickens would go to Bolivia. Most are going to Africa. Anyway, this is not about "more chickens", it is about chicken redistribution. It is not like crates of chickens are going to flown from America. The chickens will be purchased locally and given to a handful of the poorest families. The reason that BG is doing this is because there is actual data that shows it this program has helped similar families in the past.
640,000 chickens should be enough for anyone.
The primary consequence of flooding a market with a product is temporary, the secondary consequence is the destruction of the market for the local producers, thereby putting them out of business.
This is why China's public subsidising of their exports is pissing off other countries. This is one of the reasons why Uber is causing such controversy.
The difference here is that the foundation isn't importing the product, but buying them locally & redistributing, thereby both supporting the local market & growing it by helping other's setup shop.