MEDIA HEAD FAKE
Recently there have been a flurry of articles about farming and “returning to the land” in various Western magazines and newspapers. This headline in the most recent Monocle is typical of the trend – a few city-dwelling Japanese are considering a return to farming given recent economic events and also the fact that farming seems more eco-friendly and popular nowadays.
While returning to organic farming in the West on a modest scale or hobby farm is more of a “personal growth” type activity, the farms in the West are of course extremely productive, using intensive agriculture, fertilizer and optimized seeds, as well as mechanization. The small organic farmer movement is more for media show than a viable long term strategy for feeding Earth’s billions, although certainly it has its place as long as people want to pay the requisite higher prices it entails.
AGRICULTURE & INDUSTRY IN AFRICA
In Africa, the population is exploding – from what I have been able to gather it is north of 880 million and probably closing in on a billion soon – and most of Africa is importing critical foodstuffs. African “governments”, which are mostly a collection of individuals who achieve power and utilize it to enrich themselves and their cronies, do not focus on agricultural needs since most of the population has migrated to vast cities and shanty-towns and their power base moved with them (they DO focus on mineral rights and oil, of course).
This article from the Economist called “Outsourcing’s Third Wave” is eye-opening – it describes how foreign governments are negotiating with African leaders to buy / rent / run large tracts of land for the purpose of growing food in Africa for importation back to THEIR home countries. From the article:
The Saudi programme is an example of a powerful but contentious trend sweeping the poor world: countries that export capital but import food are outsourcing farm production to countries that need capital but have land to spare. Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, grow the crops there and ship them back.
Not only are foreign countries obtaining rights to the land itself, they are bringing on laborers to work the land. I can’t seem to find solid statistics on the web, but the economist article says that there are “1 million” Chinese laborers in Africa and this article says that it was estimated that there were 750,000 in 2008.
The Chinese are getting around the traditional difficulties of development in Africa in a novel way – by not involving Africans. They bring in their own labor, build their own compounds, and run the projects themselves. The scale of this effort is not well known because it isn’t in the interest of the African governments nor China’s interests to publicize this information, and neither of them gives a hoot about free journalism in any case.
It isn’t only the Chinese – the Koreans were involved in a recent deal to be able to farm on a significant portion of Madagascar’s available land – and this contributed to a political revolution which put these plans at least on temporary hold.
ETHICS AND IMPACT
The Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabia) and Asian (Chinese, Korean) companies involved in these sorts of deals are subject to different types of ethical constraints than Western companies, in say, Europe or the USA. It is frankly unimaginable that a US company would be able to get the rights to a giant tract of farmland in this day and age and use it to farm foodstuffs to ship out of an African nation while locals are dirt-poor and either starving or importing food at the same time.
The Chinese have an additional advantage – a huge pool of untapped labor. They can send their citizens abroad and they know that they will work hard and not engage in systematic unrest or organize into unions. The numbers of overseas Chinese laborers is very large, if these numbers can be trusted or verified.
It is also a terrible, sad failure that the African countries can’t manage this sort of farming themselves. Africa has been freed of the colonist influence for generations, and they have not focused on their key competitive advantages, which are 1) cheap and abundant labor 2) land and climate for farming. Their other advantages of mineral wealth and oil are able to be exploited by Western companies (mostly) with little indigenous assistance; the only real issue with those resources is overall security and whom to pay off with the locals’ share of the money. After the colonists left in the 1950’s and 1960’s some African countries experimented with heavy industry but for a lot of (obvious) reasons that failed but agriculture is an extremely logical area for them to emphasize.
The fact that foreign nations are 1) gaining huge leases or rights to farm African soil 2) using non-local labor in many circumstances is just a terrible problem for a continent that needs to develop local skills and capacities in order to start to develop some sort of solid economic framework.
Compounded with the fact that African countries are generally undergoing a population explosion (unlike the West and even much of Asia) and their citizens are packed into miserably crowded and infrastructure-poor cities, and even importing food, this is a catastrophe.
I praise the Economist and other journalists for bringing this issue up but it has received a minuscule level of overall coverage, given its large potential repercussions. Essentially:
– desperately poor countries whose only assets are cheap labor and land suitable for farming
– are so “broken” that they lack the infrastructure to run a farm economy and bring foodstuffs to market
– so that they are giving out long term leases to third countries
– to bring in third party labor to run these farms and export the food
– with the local government leaders the only beneficiaries
– while the local populace shares none of the benefits (money from labor, rent from land)
When I read about newspapers and magazines talking about how once their business model fails, there will be no more tough investigative journalism, I ask myself – where is this investigative journalism today? Who is sending journalists on the ground to see what is happening, as starving countries give away their land for a pittance to China? Why isn’t this a story that is being put on the front page? Why, when I look this up, do I find more links to Madagascar the movie for children than Madagascar, the country that just had a revolution to topple the government that was going to lease out a huge portion of their arable land to a South Korean conglomerate?
AFRICAN POPULATION GROWTH
Don’t forget the last related item – that while the African farm economy fails and is being sold to third parties, their population is exploding. For example, in Madagascar, the site of the revolution, here are some population statistics:
– population in 1995 – 13 million
– population in 2005 – 18 million (growth of 5 million in 10 years)
– population in 2015 – 24 million (growth of 6 million in 10 years)
– growth rate is 3%
When compared with the United States
– population in 1995 – 266 million
– population in 2005 – 295 million
– population in 2015 – 325 million
– growth rate is 1%
Likely there is too much here for a single post, and I need an editor. Hopefully this causes you to think about this and do your own research, and come to your own conclusions. I personally thought that these items were rather far-reaching in their effects and was surprised by the muted coverage of these deals.
Cross posted at LITGM
It looks like the Chinese can negotiate this sort of deal in Africa but the natives can’t because the Chinese can negotiate a guarantee that their project managers will have rights from the local governments there, but the local Africans can’t.
Socialism is central problem with food production in African. This socialism has both intellectual and traditional roots. The ideas that (1) farmers own title to their land independent of any government and (2) have the right to sell the food they grow at a market price are completely alien. Also, African governments have long engaged in price fixing to keep quick to riot urban populations docile. This has made it difficult for farmers to survive and impossible for them to afford improvements.
Except for land use problems, foreigners growing food for export doesn’t impact an African nation’s internal political and economic dynamics. Most importantly, it doesn’t require the governments to abandon their lucrative socialist policies.
The problems with Africa are legion and they extend deeper than just the veneer of institutional or political practices in that the origins likely trace down to human capital and cultural practices.
The first problem is that the measured mean IQ of most African populations ranges from 70 to 80. The implication of this is that the “smart fraction”, let’s say the lower bound of this demographic is set at an IQ of 115, is too small a portion of the entire population. Of a population with a mean IQ of 75, those with an IQ greater than 115 will comprise only 4/10 of 1% of the population compared to 15.9% of a population with a mean IQ of 100. Administering complex and large societies is an intellectually demanding task and so too are the welfare enhancing activities of individuals operating in their own self interest.
The second problem is culture. Cultural preferences have positive and negative consequences. The first example:
Custom, and the law that develops from custom, arise from choices that are made and then instiutionalized. In the case above, the cultural practice of parallel sexual relationships, results in uncertainty of paternity for children born into marriage. A man can always be sure that the children born to his sister are related to him, but when he and his wife have customary sexual relationships outside of marriage, the man has far less certainty of paternity than would another man living in a culture where custom frowns on simultaneous sexual relationships. In the latter case the law evolves to presume paternity on the part of the father and the children are natural heirs. In the former case, the law evolves to favor the children with the highest certainty of being blood related, those born to the sister of the deceased, rather than those born to his wife.
My point is that from the seed of culture we find cascading effects, and in much of Africa we find lower levels of parental investment in children and this manifests in many different forms, not just inheritance practices. So leaving the issue of genetics aside, we see environmental factors reducing human capital development.
Another aspect of cultural factors at work is the Big Man Syndrome. There is a lot of jockeying around to enhance one’s welfare by targeting the Big Man for protection, welfare, or being taken on team. Think of the rent seeking behavior we see in Washington. Rent seeking can certainly enhance an individual’s welfare, but doesn’t do much for increasing the welfare of a nation. What do you imagine happens to a society when rent-seeking, rather than wealth creation, becomes the preferred method of increasing one’s welfare?
The third problem that torments Africa is Western do-goodism. Here is Kevin Myers writing in Ireland’s The Independent:
So, before we tackle the malignancy of socialism we need to address the issues that form the societal substrate, namely the people and their culture. The political ideas are the icing on the cake, and quite frankly, I believe that they have a far smaller effect than is generally attributed to them.
Wow, that is a big comment. Almost as big as my post.
I am not an expert on Africa and am learning more about the topic.
I think that the population explosion in Africa, in the face of mounting dysfunction in their agricultural economy, is a critical story and one that will have a major impact.
Tango Man,
The first problem is that the measured mean IQ of most African populations ranges from 70 to 80.
I doubt this is significant. IQ test are culturally dependent and heavily influenced by education. The test do not measure any kind of raw intellectual horsepower. As Jared Diamond as pointed out, the average individual in a primitive hunter-gatherer culture has to be smarter and more capable than an average person in a civilized culture. Civilized cultures let people specialize. If a person is lacking in one cognitive skill they can specialize in area that plays to their strengths. In hunter-gatherer cultures, there is little specialization and each individual must master all the roles that humans play. Each person must be a warrior, a hunter, a politician, an artisan, a priest etc just to survive. This difference can be seen most starkly in the fate of the mentally handicapped. Such individuals can survive and reproduce in civilized cultures but in hunter-gatherer cultures, most do not survive childhood.
This means that as a general rule, the less technologically advanced a culture, the more genetically fit its people. Africans have had a mishmash of hunter-gather, horticultural and pastoral cultures so they are probably on the whole more genetically fit than Europeans or other civilized cultures. Africans born in America or who immigrate here show the same economic mobility as immigrants from other parts of the world. This suggest that the cultural and political environment of Africa is the problem and not any biological innate factor.
The point about culture is valid but there are dozens of distinct African cultures not all of which conflict with managing a modern society. The Ibo of Nigeria, for example have a culture which prizes individualism, consent of the governed, rule of law and entrepreneurism. Historically, they have done better than surrounding cultures and they do very well when the emigrate to America.
The basic problem with Africa is that they have cultures that evolved to manage the interactions of a few thousand people at most. Even within each culture, significant differences exist between subgroups. This makes it very difficult for Africans to organize millions of people.
Re: population explosion
The best way to slow population growth has been shown to be education of women and access to family planning resources. That’s why I support those types of charities rather than just the “feed the starving” ones.
Shannon,
With respect, much of your response seems to rely on talking points favored by Gould and they’ve long since refuted.
I doubt this is significant.
We can approach the question of significance from a number of different avenues. For instance, sheer quantity of correlations. Take the work of Garret Jones, now at George Mason, and his colleague W. Joel Schneider:
Granted, that research is simply pure number crunching. How about some field data. Let’s look at Army data:
IQ test are culturally dependent
This criticism has long been remedied. It’s very hard to argue that a reaction response (a light blinks and you click a button and the time is measured) or reverse digit span tests (recalling a series of numbers in reverse order eg. 1, 8, 42, 3, 147, 21 results in this answer – 21, 147, 3, 42, 8, 1) have anything to do with whether someone raised in the inner city or in the backwoods or on the plains of Serengeti, has every come across the concepts of “Yacht” or “Polo.” Even informed critics now readily concede that IQ tests are culturally neutral.
and heavily influenced by education.
This is mostly an issue of assuming reversed causality. Education doesn’t raise IQ, rather those with higher IQ are more likely to pursue longer courses of education. Look, the correlation between IQ measured at age 6 (start of education) and age 18 (completion of high school) is extraordinarily high and considering the wide variance we see in educational journeys it becomes nearly impossible to reconcile the notion that IQ is “heavily influenced by education.” See here:
The test do not measure any kind of raw intellectual horsepower.
On the contrary, they measure intelligence as well as being predictors of other life outcomes. From the last link:
Take health as another example:
As Jared Diamond as pointed out, the average individual in a primitive hunter-gatherer culture has to be smarter and more capable than an average person in a civilized culture.
1.) This is no more than an appeal to authority.
2.) Before Diamond discovered the glamor of concocting a PC favored hypothesis he was completely comfortable with publishing studies on the ethnic differences in testis size in human populations.
3.) The criticism doesn’t pass a test of internal validity, in that we measure success in life, pretty much across the world, as how one functions in modern societies, so IQ tests are very good predictors of this process. If success in modern life was determined by how many ants one could find in a rotting stump out on the savannah then Diamond might have a point, however, we know that there is little correlation between being born into and surviving in harsh environments and being successful at the skills one needs to survive in the modern world.
Africans born in America or who immigrate here show the same economic mobility as immigrants from other parts of the world. This suggest that the cultural and political environment of Africa is the problem and not any biological innate factor.
Yet we know from the Transracial Adoption Studies that this hypothesis is not valid. Why would a Black child adopted by white parents perform more closely to the standards of his birth family, or his racial group, than to his siblings? Why would a Korean child adopted at birth by American parents perform more closely to peers raised by Korean American parents than to her siblings, with whom she was raised for her entire life?
As for Africans who voluntarily immigrate here, this is a sample that suffers from selection bias. We’re not looking at a whole cross section of society from any particular region of Africa.
The point about culture is valid but there are dozens of distinct African cultures not all of which conflict with managing a modern society. The Ibo of Nigeria, for example have a culture which prizes individualism, consent of the governed, rule of law and entrepreneurism. Historically, they have done better than surrounding cultures and they do very well when the emigrate to America.
I never argued that “African culture” was incompatible with managing a modern society, rather I argued that a modern society depends on having a sizable “smart fraction” and that the lower the proportion of this “smart fraction” within society, the more difficult it becomes to develop, and sustain, that society to modern standards.
My point is that when we look at these types of questions we cannot a.) assume a creationist perspective and b.) ignore the foundational issues of societies, which are the people and their culture. Jumping to the veneer of society, its political institutions and its ideological outlook will result in constant misdiagnosis of the issue. Or to put it another way, in order to develop a solution we must first understand the problem so that we avoid the trap of advancing solutions to misdiagnosed problems.
The basic problem with Africa is that they have cultures that evolved to manage the interactions of a few thousand people at most.
The roots of most every culture developed in environments characterized by small populations. The various tribes of Gaul were not each populated by millions of tribe members. The Puritans didn’t arrive on a flotilla with a million settlers. This explanation doesn’t really explain anything. So, I still stand by my original comment – human capital and the cultural practices of a group have dramatic effects on the development of society, its laws, and the behaviors and expectations of individuals long before we factor in the influence of political ideology. To expand on this point, trace the influence of paternal certainty on male behavior and capital formation within the family and efforts to raise the human capital of the children.
Here is a common picture:
Looking strictly at environmental factors, what do you imagine is happening to the human development potential of the children, generation after generation? Multiple wives, destituting the children born to your wife, selling the “assets” of the wife’s business, etc is not the optimum method for increasing intergenerational wealth, nor of developing the human capital of children. Whether the political veneer this family operates under is socialism, crony capitalism, dynamic democracy, etc really has less bearing on the man than do the cultural expectations that guide much of his social interactions. One path could lead to working in order to benefit his wife and his children, sacrificing for the betterment of the children, leaving some form of estate to his children so that they don’t start at the bottom of the asset ladder while another path could lead to less sacrifice and work because one isn’t inclined to sacrifice for the benefit of children who were sired by another man. This cultural milieu has powerful cascading effects, and that’s my point.