Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Economics 102: Industrialization cures povety

LINK

Mugabe is ordering more farm seizures...
But I'm not posting for that reason (although seizing the most productive farms during a famine is not the way to feed your people, and of course, giving the farms to your cronies instead of locals makes a sham of land reform, but never mind).

The reason I'm posting is this comment:

Mutasa yesterday said the unavailability of land to many Zimbabweans was partly responsible for worsening poverty in the southern African country. “We are poor not because we do not have the skills, but because we do not have the land which is what we fought for,” the Security Minister said.

Umm: fellahs...that's not quiet true.

It IS the skills...

Those running the small farms are poorly educated women...with small hoes, and using slash and burn agricultural techniques...

You aren't even giving to farms to people with good agricultural skills...ask your Chinese friends to go in and teach these, and maybe the famine will disappear in the same way that Kansas is no longer a famine area like it was in the 1950's...

The way to lift a large number of people out of poverty is to encourage foreign investment to build factories, improve mines and the infrastructure, educate your kids, and to teach those actually farming to be efficient (Hand plows, fertilizer, genetically modified crops that resist disease and drought, irrigation pumps, trucks and roads to ship the crops to the cities, people who know how to run supermarkets and shops etc.)

By "throwing out" the most productive farmers, you get less food, but by destroying rule of law to do it, you are discouraging the people who actully could get your people out of poverty...

No comments:

 
Free hit counters
Free hit counters