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Bill Gates' Donation of Thousands of Chickens Rejected by Bolivia (theverge.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the hatching-a-plan dept.

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."

19 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Trending now... by johnsnails · · Score: 4, Funny

    #GATEGATE

  2. Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Exactly. I've spent a lot of time in the poorest Latin American countries (Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia), and if there's one thing the region has in abundance, it's fucking chickens. The things are everywhere. Offering chickens demonstrates an utter lack of any kind understanding of the region. It would not be so bad, except that the countries are also full of holier than thou aid workers who cruise around in land rovers and try to tell farmers how to farm... except the aid workers aren't farmers and don't know how to farm, especially given local climates.

      If you ask Bolivians, they'll tell you the first thing they need is transpotation infrastructure so that they can trade these scads of chickens they have. Spend some time there and you'll see they're right.

    2. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by quenda · · Score: 4, Funny

      Outside the cities, much of the country is dirt poor. If the government will not allow aid distribution, Gates should do a covert air-drop to impoverished villages.
      However, to reduce the environmental risks of yet another introduced species escaping and going feral, a native American fowl could be dropped instead. I suggest turkeys.

    3. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Again: Bolivia is far from a promised land, but things there are MUCH better than most other places in the world. Their death by malnutrition rates are well below most of Africa, for example: http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrition/by-country/.

      My point is, in a country which already produces 300,000 chickens per day, offering 100,000 to fight hunger is a bit insulting.

    4. Re: Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The chickens don't just have GMOs but come with a "free" copy of Windows 10, which they also rejected.

    5. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by gtall · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    7. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The stuff most aid organizations provide (food, clean water, medicine) aren't really what poor countries need. It's literally putting the cart before the horse, and can even be counter-productive by making life harder or impossible for domestic producers of those things, and allowing these countries' population to grow beyond their ability to self-sustain themselves.

      These countries need to develop their own economy first.That's why UN assistance for developing nations focuses on building infrastructure, increasing the number of citizens participating in the economy (education and gender equality), figuring out ways to exploit natural resources, facilitating trade and economic development, and helping set up government programs to help support all these things. Once you get the economic ball rolling, they can grow their own food, clean their own water, build their own hospitals. These things are the result of development. Giving people the end product instead of the means to produce the end product is exactly what the aphorism "give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life" tells us not to do.

    8. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.
    9. Re:Well, that sounded extremely patronizing. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  3. Translation by mentil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  4. Re: You are not chickens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're mistaken. The lack of funny and lack of sense does not arise from you being new.

  5. Almost 20% of Bolivia is malnourished... by drmaxx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Almost 20% of Bolivia is malnourished... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a lot less baffling if you understand that the prideful people in power who are refusing the gifts are not the same folks that are going hungry.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  6. Re:Customs! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!
  7. Re:Here we come to save the day by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Here we come to save the day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    640,000 chickens should be enough for anyone.

  9. Re:Here we come to save the day by Anonymice · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.