Al,
I just got onto this forum and may have missed a lot, but as a small
organic rancher I feel you are ignoring a lot of pertinent facts when
talking about farming, especially in so called developing countries. I
live in the middle of British Columbia, Canada, considered the
wealthiest country on Earth.
Right now I have made a deal to change my bull and have to get rid of my
5 year old, beautiful, healthy bull. There's about $10,000 worth of fast
food outlet hamburger meat in that bull, yet, I've been begging people
to take him for nothing, because our livestock prices at the farm levels
have been artificially destroyed by big business lobby groups, while
making huge profits at the retail levels both here in Canada and in the
USA. Meanwhile there are almost 800,000 people in foodbank lines in
Canada, 65,000 more than a year ago, over 13% of them employed in some
chickenfeed, part time jobs, like millions in the USA and our animals
are worth nothing while people starve.
By next year thousands of Canadian ranchers will be put out of business,
their lands and holdings picked up by multinationals for a song. About
1.5 million Mexican farmers have been pushed off the land by NAFTA, the
Mexican middle and small business class destroyed, by some independent
estimates 70% of the country pushed below the poverty level, while their
imaginary GDP numbers doubled. The figures are all there in the open,
if somebody's willing to look for them. In India there have been and
are mass suicides by farmers, in Poland and estimated 3 million farmers
will be forced off the land by their EU membership.
While you are talking about the wonderful effects of hi tech etc. on
farming communities, what will happen to these millions who still had
something while they were on their lands, but now have nothing in city
slums ?
For example, do you realize that up till now 97% of Iraqi farmers used
to reseed their own saved seeds, but now, as the legacy of Paul
Bremner's proconsulate, using their own seed has become illegal and
they'll be forced to buy their seeds from implanted multinationals ?
What will happen to them? How many can survive ? What are the long term
effects on the land and on human health of GM seeds and plants forced on
the World by a few corporations on their way to control the global food
supply ?
Please no neoclassical economic rhetoric. I have been in farming on and
off, both at the chemical Green Revolution and organic levels since
1948 and hold the 1991 copyright on the only scientifically correct
definition of economic efficiency, well tested on World Bank forums,
used in PhD dissertations remaining unbroken.
As far I'm concerned, neoclassical economics may have started off as an
error, I will give Milton Friedman et al, that much credit, but by now
have become the biggest poverty creator and destroyer in history.
If you, or anybody, really intends to look into the causes and solutions
of daily growing global poverty and income gap, you won't find it in
ideological theories. The claimed purpose of economics is supposed to
be The science for the management and distribution of scarce
resources. In my 59 years of historical and economic studies, plus my
own personal experience in 4 countries under every know political
ideology, I haven't found any evidence of any known economic theory that
came anywhere near this stated purpose.
Are there any solutions? Yes, there are, but first we have to forget
everything we think we know and make a complete break with the past and
present, using them only as experience and bad examples. Meanwhile
40,000 children will starve to death around the world today and every
day, while their governments and economists are reporting glowing GDD
and growth figures.
This is all for now. With all the very best and cheers,
Ed
(Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC, Canada)
On 10/27/2004, Al Hammond wrote:
Cornelio Hopmann raises some important points. I agree that IT may often
be used by service providers rather than by the poor directly. But I
don't agree that there is no connection between what companies can sell
to the poor and the needs of poor households. In conjuction with
Professor CK Prahalad and others, we have documented a number of win-win
business models. I realize that such approaches are still controversial,
and that examples of corporate practices that have not benefitted the
poor still come readily to mind. But for example, ITC, an Indian company
that has put Internet-connected computers in farmers' houses, situating
these e-choupals so that each serves 600 or so farmers, and supplied
daily market prices for crops, found it necessary to create trust and
economic and social value in order for its business model to succeed.
They are now serving 4 million farmers. The case study can be found on
www.digitaldividend.org. Nor is this an isolated example. We and our
colleagues have documented win-win examples in many sectors. And we have
evidence
