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 that companies which simply try to take their products > downmarket often fail. > > So I would suggest that there may be an important and overlooked > connection between the market forces that drive globalization and their > need for growth, when taken to the village level--and meeting the real > needs of the poor. In many but not all of the examples we have studied, > ICT plays a critical role--as a tool that enables transparent > transactions, or helps drive costs down, or provides access to > information, etc. ..snip... ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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