Enset the false Banana Tree
I have written many times (1) that bleeding heart liberals cause more misery and suffering in Africa than all the natural disasters put together. Indeed, if we would all just mind our own business, Nature would have made sure that there were not more than a hundred million Africans around, thus ensuring that only a few thousand would be starving or dying of disease.
Instead, through our intervention, we have facilitated the ballooning of Africa's population to an unsustainable one billion (as of 2005) poor, miserable, hungry, disease-ridden souls.
First of all, let's dispense with the delusion that food aid to Africa helps Africans. It is a hoax. The only people who benefit are American farmers and American charities at the expense of African people (2).
The silly system works like this: our government buys food products at inflated prices from American agribusiness (making our own food cost more) then donates the goods to charities in Africa. The charities, not knowing anything about commodity markets, sell the food at stupidly cheap prices in order to raise money to fund their other charitable programs. The prices they get are so low they make it impossible for local farmers to compete. After a few years, there are no African farmers left and the villages are now even more dependent on foreign "food aid" and in addition, now have even more unemployed people to feed.
Foreign Charities Do Not Want Africa to Succeed
Certainly there is no incentive on the part of foreign charities to exploit native crops. If Africans could grow enough crops on their own, they wouldn't have to buy American imports and the charities would lose their major source of funding for their other "charitable" works such as disease prevention, which ironically is directly proportional to malnutrition. So when charities kill off the local farmer, they make the village more malnourished than it was before, thereby increasing the number of people with disease, thereby increasing their need for more funding to combat the disease, thereby increasing their need to sell more food at even cheaper prices, thereby ruining even more farmers, and so on.
If every single c*ck-sucking charity would just leave Africa alone, farmers could grow their own crops, feed their own people, reduce malnutrition, reduce the number of people with disease, and end up not needing the charity in the first place.
The Enset Is A Key Resource Against Famine
This brings us to Enset (photo above), also known as the false banana. It has been the least studied domesticated crop in Africa because it is against the interest of charities or American agribusiness to promote it although recent research shows that it may be in fact a key resource against famine. The beauty of enset is that it can be harvested at any time of the year and can be stored for long periods of time. It is a durable, easily grown, highly resistant crop that interestingly enriches the soil rather than depletes it as other crops do (3).
If charities were truly interested in reducing hunger and disease in Africa, they would be pushing local farmers to grow enset. However, the problem with that is that villages would then be free from dependence on charities. Without a cause for their existence, charities would have to leave Africa.
The brutal truth is that charities need Africa to remain hungry, disease-ridden, and miserable. Otherwise, who needs them?
So whenever you read that a congressman is increasing funding for aid to Africa, you now know that somewhere a poor African soul is being consigned to a painful, miserable death by hunger or disease courtesy of our government. American agribusiness makes lots of money from this fraud and some of that money is shmearing some low-life, uncompassionate politician to push this ill-conceived act of "charity".
Whenever you read about some liberal who brags about all his concern and compassion for Africa by sending money, mosquito nets, food, or any other kind of aid to Africa, you now know it is a hollow boast made to puff up his own ego. Anyone who really cares for the poor, miserable souls there, would certainly not be sending food, money, or anything else to Africa.
ENDNOTES
(1):
My Articles on African Aid
(2):
NY Times, Charity finds that U.S. food aid for Africa hurts instead of helps
MALELA, Kenya — CARE, one of the world's biggest charities, is walking away from about $45 million a year in federal funding, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.
Its decision, which has deeply divided the world of food aid, is focused on the practice of selling tons of American farm products in African countries that in some cases compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.
"If someone wants to help you, they shouldn't do it by destroying the very thing that they're trying to promote," said George Odo, a CARE official who grew disillusioned with the practice while supervising the sale of American wheat and vegetable oil in Nairobi.
Under the system, the U.S. government buys the goods from American agribusiness, ships them overseas on mostly American-flagged carriers and then donates the goods to the aid groups. The groups sell the products in poor countries and use the money to fund their anti-poverty programs there.
...
"The NGOs have been ignoring this evidence for years that there's a negative impact on the prices farmers receive," said Matlon, who is involved in a $150 million effort financed by the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations to increase the productivity of African farmers.
The Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress, also concluded this year that the system was "inherently inefficient."
(3):
LA Times, Hungry Ethiopia Finds an Answer at Its Feet
WELKITE, Ethiopia — Even as drought and starvation threaten millions of Ethiopians, farmers in this southern province say they aren't worried about hunger, thanks to an ancient but little understood agricultural weapon that experts say could one day play a role in alleviating African famines.
Clustered around nearly every mud-walled hut in these highlands are the tall, big-leafed stalks of enset trees, also known as false banana, which grow wild in eastern and southern Africa but are believed to be harvested only in Ethiopia.
The power of the plant lies in its drought-resistant leaves and corm, which, when pulverized, yields a white, cheese-like substance that can be cooked into a flat bread or stored in underground fermentation pits for up to 20 years.
"It's always there to feed my family," said farmer Meded Kemal, 35.
He recalled a drought five years ago that wiped out his small fields of maize, chickpeas, sorghum and teff, the most popular Ethiopian grain. Only the enset survived.
Even after the family exhausted its underground supply, it didn't go hungry. It simply knocked down a few more enset stalks, which, unlike other crops, can be harvested any time of year.
"One plant can feed the family for a week," said farmer Tedesa Habte, 45, dwarfed by a field of 300 of the plants, which grow as tall as 30 feet. "We never go hungry."
Nearly 15 million people in southern Ethiopia, including the Gurage, Sidama and Hadiya tribes, rely on enset for most of their nutrition, though the plant is relatively low in protein and can taste bitter.
The stalks take seven years to reach maturity and harvesting is tricky. But handled properly, the plants, dubbed "the shield" by farmers, can help save lives, as they did for many of the southern tribes during Ethiopia's severe famines of 1973 and 1984.
