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Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

nytimes.com

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Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#11

Post by deogeo »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #5
mjfl wrote: post #3

in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.

The story about violence against farmers is mostly a white supremacist myth. “Mostly” because there obviously are some cases, but those do not statistically differ from crime in general. Also strange to immediately think of South Africa when reading about Ghana. Ghana is closer to Brazil and Spain than it is to SA.

"Since the early 1990s, there has been a marked increase in assaults and murders of the owners and managers of commercial farms and their families, disproportionate to general crime trends in South Africa." [1]

Which does not say farmers, or white farmers specifically, are targeted disproportionately - I was unable to find statistics on this. But they are targeted:

"Yet the available research shows that most crime against white farmers is criminally motivated, the perpetrators seeking firearms, money, or vehicles, and that the violence used is instrumental to these purposes. Farms, remote and scattered, are seen as easy targets. In a small number of cases, the motive may be revenge for eviction or past ill-treatment." [1]

Note that South Africa has 6x the murder rate of the USA, so saying farmers are under attack is certainly true, even if they're not disproportionately under attack.

Edit: I looked around some more, and there does not appear to be very reliable data, but depending on how you slice the numbers, farmers may be disproportionately under attack by a factor as high as 6 [2].

Let me also remark on how curious it is that the media would so confidently call this theory 'debunked' (and racist!), when by their own admission, there is insufficient official data (gathered by the majority black government) to conclude either way [2]. I do not recall this level of skepticism being so widely applied to the Black Lives Matters movement.

Edit 2: User angersock (whose post is dead) did find what looks to be official statistics: "According to the South African Institute for Race Relations, commercial farmers, who are predominantly white, were twice as likely to be killed as the average citizen." [3]

I am confident that, should this be brought to the BBCs attention, they will run a front-page story correcting their earlier claims that this is a racist myth.

[1] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/safrica2/Safarms1.htm#_1_1

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41807642

[3] https://www.refworld.org/docid/5283411d4.html

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#12

Post by bongo662 »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #8
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_farm_attacks

Your Wikipedia article says exactly the same in the very first graph? Quote: “it is unclear whether farmers are at greater risk of being murdered than other South Africans” Later: “Fact-checkers have widely identified the notion of a "white genocide" in South Africa as a falsehood or myth.[12][17]”

If you follow the source into the BBC and then a study that they quote in the BBC as well, you’ll see that farmers regardelss of skin color are at greater risk: https://irr.org.za/reports/research-policy-brief/Farm%20atta...

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#13

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

deogeo wrote: post #11
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story about violence against farmers is mostly a white supremacist myth. “Mostly” because there obviously are some cases, but those do not statistically differ from crime in general. Also strange to immediately think of South Africa when reading about Ghana. Ghana is closer to Brazil and Spain than it is to SA.

"Since the early 1990s, there has been a marked increase in assaults and murders of the owners and managers of commercial farms and their families, disproportionate to general crime trends in South Africa." [1] Which does not say farmers, or white farmers specifically, are targeted disproportionately - I was unable to find statistics on this. But they are targeted: "Yet the available research shows that most crime ag…

That is almost 20 years old, and still doesn’t support the racist theory that white farmers, specifically, are attacked that started this thread.

See the Wikipedia article someone else linked for more recent sources of data, and the observation that farm attacks today are actually decreasing.

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#14

Post by inquiry »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #5
mjfl wrote: post #3

in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.

The story about violence against farmers is mostly a white supremacist myth. “Mostly” because there obviously are some cases, but those do not statistically differ from crime in general. Also strange to immediately think of South Africa when reading about Ghana. Ghana is closer to Brazil and Spain than it is to SA.

There seem to be some on-the-ground reports suggesting attacks on farmers in South Africa [1][2][3][4][5].

I'm looking at some articles seeking to debunk the "myth" and what I see isn't well argued. E.g., Snopes seems to suggest [6]

  1. David Duke said this is happening therefore it is false
  2. there are no reliable statistics
  3. The murder rate is lower in recent years
The former is a logical fallacy. The second just means there are no reliable statistics, but doesn't prove things either way. I suspect "no reliable crime statistics" is true in many third world countries. The third point implies that X isn't happening because X happened more last year, which isn't convincing.

The New York times echoes the second and third points [7].

[1] https://sauncut.co.za/50-farm-attacks-and-4-farm-murders-in-... [2] https://www.sapeople.com/2019/05/24/4-farm-attacks-in-6-days... [3] https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/south-... [4] http://www.radiofreesouthafrica.com/graphic-photos-farm-murd... [5] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9151623/white-south-african-fa... [6] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-farmers-south-africa... [7] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/world/africa/trump-south-...

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#15

Post by dang »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #6
mjfl wrote: post #3

in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.

Ghanese farmers aren't white so I think it's unlikely.

""Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.""

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#16

Post by Rebelgecko »

claudeganon wrote: post #4
mjfl wrote: post #3

in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this is largely a conspiracy theory concocted by the far right: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/23/white-farmers-...

The article doesn't really seem to back that up. Lots of the people pushing that theory are definitely alt-right types, but when the article doesn't present any facts to contradict them it doesn't make it seem like they're actually wrong. For some "conspiracy theories" it can be impossible to prove someone wrong, but there should be some pretty straightforward statistics to help figure out if this is bogus or not. FWIW it seems to be a commonly held belief by South Africans. The ones I know told me that in SA they won't stop at a red stoplight ("robot") in certain areas. The risk of getting carjacked and murdered is higher (or perceived to be higher) than the risk of getting in a deadly car crash when running a red light.

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#17

Post by angersock »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #5
mjfl wrote: post #3

in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.

The story about violence against farmers is mostly a white supremacist myth. “Mostly” because there obviously are some cases, but those do not statistically differ from crime in general. Also strange to immediately think of South Africa when reading about Ghana. Ghana is closer to Brazil and Spain than it is to SA.

[dead]

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#18

Post by dang »

mjfl wrote: post #3

in Ghana, how well are property laws enforced? Is there violence against farmers, like there is in South Africa? Article does not touch on this, but could be another reason why people choose not to farm.

This is both off topic and a flamewar topic, which the site guidelines ask people not to introduce.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

To give this article a fairer chance at having its actual content discussed, I'm going to collapse this subthread.

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#19

Post by whiddershins »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #13
deogeo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Since the early 1990s, there has been a marked increase in assaults and murders of the owners and managers of commercial farms and their families, disproportionate to general crime trends in South Africa." [1] Which does not say farmers, or white farmers specifically, are targeted disproportionately - I was unable to find statistics on this. But they are targeted: "Yet the available research shows that most crime ag…

That is almost 20 years old, and still doesn’t support the racist theory that white farmers, specifically, are attacked that started this thread. See the Wikipedia article someone else linked for more recent sources of data, and the observation that farm attacks today are actually decreasing.

Hey hey,

I’m reading this thread with no context or agenda and I don’t see the first commenter saying anything about white farmers.

When you say “started this thread” that seems misleading because you brought an interesting perspective about allegations regarding the victimizations of white farmers in to this. But it didn’t seem to be at all what the original commented was elucidating.

Actually the vulnerability of farmers to violent depredation in contrast to hunters or herders has been proposed as a huge factor throughout history and prehistory guiding physical and social evolution.

That was my first association.

So, I don’t know what the original commenter meant but I’m not certain you do either.

Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame

#20

Post by deogeo »

gubbrora wrote: post #9
claudeganon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this is largely a conspiracy theory concocted by the far right: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/23/white-farmers-...

That article is heavy on how "the other" is talking about this, but light on facts about the situation on the ground. Here is an article about the farm attacks https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa...

It is very curious that an article so heavy on how others talk about something, wouldn't mention the leader of a major South African political party saying "We are not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for now" [1]. A statement that was explicitly not commented on by the largest party. In fact, he received their support when he got in trouble for repeatedly singing "shoot the boer".

Seems rather comparable to if the KKK had 10% of the senate in the US, and the tacit cooperation of one of the two major parties.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Freedom_Fighters#Anti...

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