Subsidies aren't bad?

Depends on who you are. If you're Malawi, it turned out to be the answer, the way out of the poverty trap.

The lesson here is not to ignore the experts, as the article's title says, but to work to your situation, not someone else's expectations and desires. Those experts Malawi was ignoring? The ones that said subsidies and big government would sink a poor country? They wanted Malawi to spend less of their (loaned) money. Most people could tell you, though, that sometimes a little more money spent is worth it in the long run.

Food is a right

I hadn't seen anything worth the trouble of writing in a while, but apparently I missed World Food Day. It's good to see so many countries coming out in support of food as a human right (after all, if life is a right, food has to be a right). My one question: where was the US and why didn't we hear about this?

The price of free things

Health agencies are starting to focus on giving away bed nets in Africa.

If you've been reading this for a while, you know how I feel about giveaways -- they cause dependency and ruin local producers/merchants! No hand-outs!

Except . . . giving away bed nets seems to be equivalent to giving away vaccines: bed nets actually have a protective effect on the community if used by a sufficient number of residents. First, really?--cool! Second, public health issues are actually considered to be areas in which the well-being of all benefits from public funding. Just like vaccines, it's in the public interest to provide bed nets to those who can't afford them.

So why the debate? Well, there are always a few small government advocates who want everything to be in the private sector. Also, some people don't like to let go of an idea once they get hold of it. I was once told that the correct answer to any question asked by an epidemiologist is 'it depends'. For the people who still cling to the concept that giving away free goods is the least cost-efficient development scheme, add this caveat: only if the societal benefit of the giveaway is less than the societal cost. In this case, that assumption fails, so we must change our stance and encourage bed net giveaways.

Sensible classes? Real-world ideas? Yes, thank you.

I know, I've been away for a little while (busy, sick, etc), but I've built up a backlog of articles to comment on, so here goes:

MIT apparently started classes in basic technologies that could be used in countries with infrastructure or supply issues. Simple, useful ideas for heating, cooking, powering, processing -- this is exactly the sort of thing more development agencies should be doing.

Now, if only we could get the classes held on-site . . .

We can do without them

Hurrah for CARE! They have chosen to phase out US-donated food aid, focusing instead on local production systems. After the Farm Bill has gone through Congress with subsidies still in place, it makes me glad to see someone is going to break the connection between over-subsidized crops in the US and low-balled markets in the developing world. Helping local farmers produce and sell the commodities needed is always the better way to develop.

Yes, our development money is being well spent

Of course, the US needs a military base in Africa.

Sorry, but I agree with the Africans -- I want to know why!

What will be the next local?

Looking critically at the idea of 'food miles' and greenhouse gas production, some people are starting to think that eating locally isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Well, it depends on how you eat locally.

For instance, I could eat locally by demanding the same level of aesthetic perfection in the same variety of foods, willing to pay extra for the fruit or vegetable that wasn't meant to grow in my region. In that case, the extra water, pesticides, energy, etc. used to grow that produce could outweigh the resources needed to ship it from South America or New Zealand.

On the other hand, I could eat locally by paying attention to growing seasons and regional specialties, willing to eat in-season, local varietals that may have a few blemishes. In that case, well, I'm eating like one of my ancestors, who would never have considered demanding California strawberries in December when they lived in New York. In other words, I'm decreasing my footprint the old-fashioned way.

What's that? You can't give up your exotic tastes? Then don't. But buy the exotic stuff from the places it's meant to be grown.

You want more variety in your diet, and less seasonal clumping? Shut up and eat your zucchini!

Would it kill us?

Yes, subsidies are absolutely necessary for the survival of the American farmer. Promise.

That's what they thought in New Zealand, too, but apparently they were wrong.

Another Farm Bill has almost passed (just the Senate and a signature to go) with subsidies almost completely intact. Sorry, developing world, but our family farms would go bankrupt otherwise.

Except, wait, who actually gets most of the subsidies again? Oh, right, producers of corn, cotton, soy, sugar -- commodities like that. What do most family farmers grow? Vegetables (unsubsidized), fruits (unsubsidized), meat (unsubsidized), dairy (okay, they get a little help). So who's getting the subsidies? Corporate farmers. Now you have US officials saying that ending subsidies would bankrupt our family farms and force them to sell out to corporate farms. The ones who would sell out either have already or are on the verge of it! The family farms we want to protect are the ones we're not helping.

No, we're not the next New Zealand. We can't raise our dairy cows on grass (at least not if we want affordable milk). We're bigger and more corporate to begin with. But maybe we could be the next Australia . . .

Why Africa fears western (noun)

This editorial seemed to me sad, but not unexpected. You see, we've been mishandling our PR in Africa ever since the West decided to go there. Not just our PR, but the African people -- when we focus on imposing our goals and expectations or ignoring African goals and expectations, we create animosity. When we hold positions of power, animosity becomes fear.

What we need is a giant PR campaign, continent-wide, explaining that we're trying to help. At the same time, we need to actually try to help. Otherwise, more people are going to be convicted of harming Africans deliberately.

After long absence . . . debate!

I have been on a much-enjoyed vacation, but this article convinced me to come back to blogging (at least for now).

You see, with Farm Sanctuary being in Watkins Glen and my DVM alma mater being only 1 hour away, I treated some of these rescued animals as a vet student. They got extraordinary treatment -- months of PT for a calf, radiation therapy for a goat, exploratory surgery for a pig -- at extraordinary cost. People sponsored many of these animals, sending in money each month to ensure they never had to die without the finest of treatment. Many ran up bills in the thousands of dollars and up.

What are you people thinking????

For the money spent on cancer therapy for that goat, I'm guessing 20 families in Africa could have been provided with milk goats that would be loved, cared for, and given happy lives (while feeding the members of said families). For the surgery on the pig (which resulted in euthanasia due to an untreatable problem), 10 children in SE Asia could have been sent to school from the proceeds of a pig-raising operation. When did animals rank above humans?

I am concerned about animal welfare, and I believe the article makes some excellent points about the need to work together despite differences of philosophy, but I think groups like Farm Sanctuary have their priorities skewed.

This weekend, my parents and I had a goat roast for a group of my international friends. One member of the group who couldn't come emailed me, concerned about goat slaughter methods in Muslim communities. This is a reasonable concern (although proper halal slaughter is quite humane). My issue is with people who consider animals before people.

In my book, kids eat first.

Higher education follows primary?

I was interested by this article because I've visited Cheikh Anta Diop. In fact, I have a friend who is a professor there. They aren't kidding -- the vet school (one of the few, if not the only, in W. Africa) is in good shape for them, but there isn't much there. Their entire lab space is about the size of the gross anatomy labs at any school here. They don't have a clinic to practice in. It's not where you'd want to be training the front line against avian influenza, rinderpest, and other diseases that could devastate our economies if they surged.

Why should we care? Besides the large proportion of grad students coming into this country from Africa (who need to know things they might not learn there), we benefit from their improved education by not having to pay Western researchers to do the needed field trials for African problems. They work cheaper even when they have the education, so we can put more development money into the infrastructure and project funds, less into the staff salaries.

I've been given this incredible blessing of attending good colleges and universities. One day, I may even leave them; for now, I'd just like to share that opportunity with people who've worked much harder to get much less.

Hunger: the end

What does one write on Good Friday, when one has spent the last 40 days writing about hunger? When one has gone grocery shopping this afternoon, buying luxuries against the end of the Lenten discipline? When one has never truly felt hunger, despite that discipline, and despite knowing those who have?

I don't know what to write. I am blessed, as, I imagine, are you, to have eaten my fill many times, to have education and opportunities, to speak and write and read on issues that interest me. The tragedy of hunger is that it walks hand in hand with the lack of all those things. Hunger travels with ignorance, with oppression, because it feeds from them. Hunger lives with those who were not given a chance far more often than those who were.

The truth is, I can't really add anything to what I've written before. I've explained my take on the hunger situation and some possible solutions. If you want to learn more, I've suggested some resources. For now, I'll just ask: please, do something.

Hunger: malnutrition in the midst of plenty

This may not seem like an issue to attack in a post on hunger, but I think it is vital for domestic issues of hunger: the poor are not just going hungry, they're being malnourished.

Undernourished and malnourished are different things. Undernourished is a lack of calories. Malnourished is the wrong calories, or the wrong balance of nutrients.

Our children in poor communities are being malnourished, in part, because healthy food isn't available. If you aren't in a suburb with a car to get to the big supermarket, your access to fresh produce and non-packaged food is limited. In the country, of course, you can grow your own. In the city, many people are left with just the corner convenience store. How healthy can it be to eat every meal out of convenience store choices? Not to mention expensive . . .

Add to this the ubiquitous cheap fast food with low nutritional value to match the low price, and the poor choices available in many school cafeterias, and the parents who don't know how to cook from basic ingredients . . . you get poverty leading to malnourishment, with or without undernourishment. NYC is doing something about this. It might be a good idea for other cities to consider similar actions.

Until then, let's push for farmer's markets and neighborhood grocery stores, for healthy school lunches and nutritional training as part of development strategies. That may help end one of the less visible hunger effects of poverty.

Hunger: breaking out of apathy

Well, I could use a little of this for my work right now, but maybe we'll tackle the problem of world-hunger-apathy.

Why does it exist? Maybe I'm feeling a little pessimistic, but I think it has to do with our basic selfishness. If we personally are not hungry, why would we care about hunger? That's the idea of the hunger banquets and educational/short-term mission trips: letting people actually experience the feeling. That can help break apathetic cycles.

Maybe the distance is also related; most of us don't live near the hungry, so it seems less important than the things we see every day. There, again, the short trips to areas that experience hunger can help close the distance. Also, volunteering with organizations that work directly with the hungry could help increase your feelings for local hunger issues.

Mostly, though, we have to make the decision to care. I guess that's my theme this week: the choice is individual and personal. Then we can start trying to shock ourselves into doing something.

Hunger: Stewardship

I've written in the past about accountability, but a meeting/speaker I went to tonight got me interested in writing about stewardship. They're similar things, but while accountability means reporting to an outside agency, stewardship means reporting to yourself and God.

If we were perfect stewards, would there be hunger in the world? I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I feel that perfect stewardship would entail us giving the extra that we don't need to someone who could use it to its full potential (on a personal or national or international level, same concept). Then again, unless perfect stewardship from us was matched by perfect stewardship by everyone else, some people would waste what they had and people would go hungry by result, whether the waste happened in someone's excessive possessions or someone else's minimal possessions. In other words, we can't end hunger by perfecting the use of our own resources.

We could end hunger if we got the entire world to steward their resources perfectly. That's the idea behind socialism, right? Everyone has a certain amount of things to which they are entitled, and those that have extra will have to give it up to those who have not enough. Socialist governments take this principle and mandate it, but I'm not sure that works right (unless the nation in question has a Scandinavian work ethic, so people work even though they will get the same financial benefits from laziness). I think, in the end, that people have to choose stewardship for themselves.

That leaves us with only one acting point: convincing people to be good stewards. I guess that's what I've been trying to do here, these 40 days, by showing how and why. You have to make the decision, though.

Please?

Hunger: why?

I admit, I'm out of ideas. This has happened on occasion in the last 35 days, but inspiration generally struck. Today -- nothing.

So maybe I'll talk about why hunger exists. Except, of course, that I don't really know. I can spout off arguments: distribution problems, inequity, greed, misunderstanding, drought, disease, the list goes on. But none of these are core reasons.

I think all of this stems from living in a fallen world. I'm not going to get too deep into theology, but everyone should be able to agree that this world and the people in it are not inherently good in the sense that we think of good. The world is good, but not good, if you know what I mean. We think good means good-to-us, when it actually means good-for-us. Big difference.

People are not good, deep down, in any sense of the word. We all have feelings that we refer to as base, base instincts and base emotions. Ever wonder why we use that term in the connotation of bad? We sense that we are imperfect, flawed creatures at heart.

So hunger exists. Some people live in plenty while others suffer in need. Thus it was and ever shall be. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do something about it, just that we need to know that we can't ever completely fix it. I joke that my career goal is to end world hunger, but I have to admit that making a small dent is all I can reasonably hope for.

But that small dent is worth it.

Hunger: participation

If you couldn't tell in my earlier posts, I consider participation to be crucial in any development plan. In particular, participation from the people who are going to benefit. It's good to have the local, regional, and national governments involved, it's nice to have the help of other agencies in the area and in the field, but it's absolutely crucial to have the input, agreement, and active participation of the people you're trying to help.

Otherwise, you do dumb things, spending lots of money on projects that everyone will ignore. Examples I've been told: irrigation projects with pipes that no one knows how to fix (it breaks, it's useless), training in modern surgery techniques (castration, in the case I heard of) when the supplies in the area are limited (a rope and a knife), providing improved chickens when people don't like the taste of birds with white feathers.

How do you get participation? Start at the beginning: do a needs assessment. The best way I've heard of to do that is the bean method. Draw up a list of projects your organization would be willing to work on. Have a big meeting in the community, with all the people who might possibly be involved there (you might think that would be difficult, but in my experience people will drop everything for a meeting, especially if the elders get to make speeches). Explain the different projects: who would be involved, what they would entail, what the benefits might be. Put a symbol on the ground to represent each project (i.e. a hammer for a building project). Give every person in attendance a number of dried beans (10 may be best). Tell them to put as many beans as they want in a pile in front of the projects they most like, with more going to the better projects and none to the worst. That way, the people vote, anonymously, with the understanding that people may want more than one of your options. The projects with the most beans in their piles win your support.

Once you've chosen a project, work with the community leaders. Make sure that people in the community support your project in action, not just words: find volunteers to help or hire locals to do some of the work. Teach people as you go the basics of repair, continuation, whatever is appropriate. Invite the elders to your meetings, at least before making any major decisions. You should spend as much time on teaching as on your 'official' job.

Above all, you are not an expert in their way of life. They are. Listen to them, learn from them, and make no assumptions about them.

Hunger: more alternative(s)

No post yesterday: the nicer the hotels, the less is free. I wasn't going to pay 10 dollars to spend an hour of my sleeping time online, sorry.

What else can we do about hunger, besides giving food?

Education is the key, really, to improving lives in the long run. The old saw is that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life. Well, if you teach him aquaculture techniques, you feed his country for even longer.

Not just agricultural education, though. For many people in places where hunger strikes on a regular basis, their only capital is themselves. They have no savings, no valuables, little to no land: no real assets. But they have themselves. Most of the time, that means they have a body that is used to hard work, which they can rent to people. Wouldn't it be better to provide them with a strong mind, capable of higher-level, better-paying jobs, to accompany that body? With education, Bangalore has gone from low-income to IT center to the world. Despite an agricultural history, they have developed a way to feed their people through non-agricultural jobs.

Ag education does have its place in the grand education scheme. In countries currently relying on ag production, schools and universities should try to develop a strong extension and research service in each of their production zones or regions. This requires a good training program for scientists and extension specialists, preferably to return to their home regions and work in cooperation with the local farmers.

All of this requires a good primary and secondary school system feeding into upper-level training. I cannot stress enough the necessity of universal primary education. It may not put food in stomachs today, but it will do more in the long run than we ever can with free corn.

Hunger: alternatives

Since I spent yesterday's post talking about not giving food away, what are our alternatives? I mentioned food for work programs, but there are other choices:

• fund programs to improve genetics and techniques in local agriculture
• improve transportation infrastructure from farms to hungry people
• decrease post-harvest losses with improved storage facilities
• increase local industry (this improves wages, which increases the amount people can spend on food)

There's something you might notice about these: they mostly involve giving money! As I've mentioned before, most governments would prefer to give food because it makes money for their farmers and agro-allied industries. The truth is, though, money is much more useful. I don't think people will pick this up and run with it. After all, it costs more, doesn't it?

Hunger: handouts

At Roxann's suggestion (since I was out of ideas tonight):

Why is handing out food (usually) a bad idea?

Think about a local economy for a moment. Can you make a living from selling something that other people are giving away? Not unless you have higher quality that people are willing and able to pay for. That's the idea behind price wars, right? People pay the higher price when they'll get more for their money; otherwise, they pick the lowest price.

Now think about a situation where money is not abundant. People have to be able to pay the higher price to get the better quality and keep you in business. If they can't afford that extra, even if it's a very small amount, they'll take the free product. They have to.

Now you can't sell your product. Do you keep producing? No, you find another job and get your product for free like everyone else. That's only sensible.

OK, put this in an agricultural setting: you produce food staples, but an outside agency is giving them away (or their equivalent, like rice instead of corn). You stop producing rice because you can get corn for free and no-one will buy your rice. Now no-one produces rice in your area, you look for other work. Of course, if you live in a typical rice-producing region, there isn't much other work to do. So you become unemployed, but you still get your free corn.

If you're the outside agency, you were giving away corn because there was a food shortage. Now, the food shortage has grown. Plus, all the people who used to produce food are sitting around with nothing to do and are slowly losing their sense of self-worth because of it. Does that sound like a dangerous situation to anyone else?

I said that handing out food is usually a bad idea, but of course, there are exceptions. Famines happen, and when they do it's important to provide food. There are ways of making it less damaging, however -- food for work is probably the best example. Your food donation isn't given to people who can work unless they do something to improve their communities. Win-win!