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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

#31

Post by infogulch »

zizee wrote: post #30
rmason wrote: post #29

This is a great development for a number of reasons: 1. You've got high unemployment and a homegrown agriculture will put people to work. 2. Citizens diet is less dependent on a long supply chain 3. A local agriculture will drive down the cost of food. This will make a measurable difference in everyone's life. In America we pay 6.4% of our income for food, in Africa it's 60%. If the cost of food goes down people will…

From your linked article, the reason people spend a greater percentage of their incomes on food is not because of the cost of food, but that their incomes are much lower: > The figures do not mean that food is more expensive in Nigeria than in the US. In fact, quite the reverse. The average American spends $2,392 per year on food, the average Nigerian half that: $1,132. The average Kenyan spends just $543 a year on f…

Look at it this way: if the percentage income spent on food dropped from 60% to, say 20%, that would effectively double their remaining income! I don't see how that could not affect a local economy, regardless of the absolute scale.

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

#32

Post by [deleted] »

rmdashrfstar wrote: post #21
dang wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is a simple question and reference to an event a flame war?

[deleted]

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

#33

Post by dahfizz »

infogulch wrote: post #31
zizee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your linked article, the reason people spend a greater percentage of their incomes on food is not because of the cost of food, but that their incomes are much lower: > The figures do not mean that food is more expensive in Nigeria than in the US. In fact, quite the reverse. The average American spends $2,392 per year on food, the average Nigerian half that: $1,132. The average Kenyan spends just $543 a year on f…

Look at it this way: if the percentage income spent on food dropped from 60% to, say 20%, that would effectively double their remaining income! I don't see how that could not affect a local economy, regardless of the absolute scale.

I think the point is that actually doubling income is a better way to increase income than trying to optimize the price of one product.

What we do know is that food is already very cheap in Africa. It's not obvious that food could get much cheaper, let alone the 300% price reduction that you give in your example.

On the other hand, we do know there are huge gains to be had when it comes to increasing income and economic activity in general. That's where our effort would be best spent.

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

#35

Post by gridlockd »

infogulch wrote: post #31
zizee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your linked article, the reason people spend a greater percentage of their incomes on food is not because of the cost of food, but that their incomes are much lower: > The figures do not mean that food is more expensive in Nigeria than in the US. In fact, quite the reverse. The average American spends $2,392 per year on food, the average Nigerian half that: $1,132. The average Kenyan spends just $543 a year on f…

Look at it this way: if the percentage income spent on food dropped from 60% to, say 20%, that would effectively double their remaining income! I don't see how that could not affect a local economy, regardless of the absolute scale.

You can do that in two ways: Reduce cost of food by two thirds or double their income.

Both of these feats would be incredible. So yeah, if we could do incredible things, that would be amazing.

Let's get back to reality though: Food prices are more or less set by international markets. African farmers can't compete with other countries, because they work so inefficiently. Making more people work as farmers doesn't change that.

That's the reason why Africans import so much food. It's actually cheaper. You don't need more people working as farmers, you would need automation to be competitive, but then less people are actually employed. Even then, this wouldn't lower food prices below market price, because those farmers can now export instead of serving the domestic market.

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

#36

Post by gridlockd »

nhhilltopper wrote: post #28

Try finding capital, infrastructure, stable and non-corrupt government, and competent legal system in most of Africa (it is a large continent - not just Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa). Going much beyond sustenance in Africa is still a massive challenge.

To add to that, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa are "easy mode". Those countries are far more developed than people imagine, despite massive corruption.

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

#37

Post by gridlockd »

mc32 wrote: post #26
Mikeb85 wrote: post #24

At the end of the day, people need food to eat. If farming can provide a decent living (in this case, it looks as though Ghana is under-served in this sector), people will fill that gap. Even more than that, farming is an essential human activity and we could use another green revolution.

True. I think Ghana has it s bit easier than other places, because they haven’t suffered a prolonged disaster. Weak countries affected by ongoing disasters get international aid which can have “dumping” effect by undercutting the native farmers and making their enterprise less viable. In countries where this happens they (aid) have to be careful they don’t end up undercutting local economies when they try to “help”,

Do economies really need to go through that "farming phase" to grow? I don't see the connection. Modern farming employs less than 1% of the population. Non-modern farming can not compete at all except in tiny niches.

So how are those "native farmers" going to bring their societies from poverty to prosperity, by being completely uncompetitive, but protected at the same time?

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

#39

Post by Sniffnoy »

jobigoud wrote: post #38

What is up with the Millenials Do X, Millenials do Y? I don't remember reading this kind of stories for previous generations. Why are things attributed to a collective like this, it's weird.

On the contrary, it's not weird at all. It's incorrect, but such thinking in collectives is entirely natural. It's seeing past such things and recognizing that one should not to attribute things to collectives like this that is unusual.

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

#40

Post by ryanmccullagh »

zizee wrote: post #30
rmason wrote: post #29

This is a great development for a number of reasons: 1. You've got high unemployment and a homegrown agriculture will put people to work. 2. Citizens diet is less dependent on a long supply chain 3. A local agriculture will drive down the cost of food. This will make a measurable difference in everyone's life. In America we pay 6.4% of our income for food, in Africa it's 60%. If the cost of food goes down people will…

From your linked article, the reason people spend a greater percentage of their incomes on food is not because of the cost of food, but that their incomes are much lower: > The figures do not mean that food is more expensive in Nigeria than in the US. In fact, quite the reverse. The average American spends $2,392 per year on food, the average Nigerian half that: $1,132. The average Kenyan spends just $543 a year on f…

Where do you get this number, $2,392 per year? I can tell you that for me, it's way more than that.
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