Blogging For the Eradication of Poverty – Criticizing The MDGs
October 18th, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Development, Economy
Christie Peacock, head of Farm-Africa, has a critical review of the implementation of the MDGs in the Guardian:
Millennium Development Goals: We need to build firm economic foundations | Katine | guardian.co.uk via kwout
This seems to be an issue that comes up on a regular basis: the MDGs are a governmental affair dependent upon donations without much input from the civil society. Farm-Africa, on the other hand focuses on agriculture and livelihood in order to avoid dependence upon aid with a focus on higher-yield crops and animal health.
This is all well and good but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame this particular aspect on the MDGs. There is much blame to be placed on US and EU agricultural subsidies as well as structural adjustment policies that pushed agriculture, in many peripheral countries from subsistence to cash crops as part of export policies.
Posted in Development, Economy | 1 Comment »
October 20th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
it’s always possible i’m drinking some revisionist history kool-ade on this, being something of a commodities farmer myself, but iirc, we used to grow — and export — a lot of wheat at one time. then along came the green revolution and norman borlaug and his specially-bred wheat that other, poorer countries could grow for themselves [i'm in favor of all nations being able to produce their own food]… which led to a bunch of u.s. wheat farmers becoming destitute… which led to the development of gmo corn varieties that would grow in wheat country… which led to our exporting that commodity [largely for livestock feed in richer countries]… and now ethanol… [i've particularly been following the mato grasso deforestation issues lately]
i’m not up for getting into the politics and economics and subsidies part of it [yet] but i would like to find some reliable sources of information — including actual data, i’m a numbers geek — on sustainable agriculture in africa, and since your my go-to person on africa, can you point me to some websites? [i've bookmarked farm-africa, thanks to this post]