WI: Green Revolution Spreads to Africa

The problem in Africa is the infrastructure to support industrial agriculture didn't exist. For the green revolution you need:

1) Cash-based farm economy so that farmers can buy the inputs.
2) Good roads and railroads to link farmers to markets (to buy inputs and sell their produce).
3) Facilitators - from agricultural scientists to teach farmers how to use the new techniques to shopkeepers, truckers, insurance providers etc. When lacking some facilitators, farmers can do those jobs themselves, but if there are too few facilitators, then switching to the new system is too much work for any human.

The biggest lack in Africa has been the infrastructure. Africa just didn't have enough roads and rails (or enough cities) in the 70s.

It is better now, but it is still easier for African cities to import crops from the US than from their own hinterlands in most cases.

fasquardon
 
Last edited:

kernals12

Banned
The problem in Africa is the infrastructure to support industrial agriculture didn't exist. For the green revolution you need:

1) Cash-based farm economy so that farmers can buy the inputs.
2) Good roads and railroads to link farmers to markets (to buy inputs and sell their produce).
3) Facilitators - from agricultural scientists to teach farmers how to use the new techniques to shopkeepers, truckers, insurance providers etc. When lacking some facilitators, farmers can do those jobs themselves, but if there are too few facilitators, then switching to the new system is too much work for any human.

The biggest lack in Africa has been the infrastructure. Africa just didn't have enough roads and rails (or enough cities) in the 70s.

It is better now, but it is still easier for African cities to import crops from the US from their own hinterlands in most cases.

fasquardon
I don't think India had much of any of that stuff in the 60s.
 
I don't think India had much of any of that stuff in the 60s.

You kidding? India had the most advanced railroad system in Asia, was densely packed with cities and had sophisticated markets and financial infrastructure in the 60s. Indian agriculture was probably the first agricultural system to become marketized as well (it's actually a big part of why the British were able to take the area over so easily).

fasquardon
 
The most laughable claim is that the green revolution was a form of colonialism that had westerners "impose" their methods of farming and destroy the old way of life, these people apparantly thinking the third world should be nothing more than a giant living museum where the miseries of agricultural life are preserved for eternity.
if they remembered M S Swaminathan's (who is still fighting day and night for the welfare of the indian rural labourer, despite his advanced age, look up the ms swaminathan commission) work on the indian front of the green revolution more these claims would be a lot more mooted, imo.
 
Last edited:

kernals12

Banned
if they remembered M S Swaminathan's (who is still fighting day and night for the welfare of the indian rural labourer, despite his advanced age, look up the ms swaminathan commission) work on the indian front of the green revolution more these claims would be a lot more mooted, imo.
Facts don't matter to those people.
 
Top