In Holland, land of many onions, being a farmer usually means having over a million in assets. it's not a career choice for young people without significant assets. things will go in that direction everywhere and it means small farmers will go the way of the dodo. so they are in fact wrong in trying to get a lot of people to choose farming. you only need a few rich guys.
Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
71–80 of 94 posts
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 econo…
If they're importing a large amount of their food from Europe as the article states they very well can lower the cost by producing it locally. Even if they're less efficient than the Europeans in doing so.
I'm not sure they can, actually. The wheat fields of Kansas or the Ukraine are so vastly more productive than trying to grow crops in a tropical climate.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#73This 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…
> A local agriculture will drive down the cost of food
Is this true? In my experience the cheapest food is rarely almost never locally produced. It may be marketing and the demand for local food is higher.
Long supply chains have a lot of value add. Sure there is cost to transporting and storing the food, but the process has other efficiencies that more than make up for the cost. I've even read stories about Central American countries exporting their produce only to reimport it back for the locals to conusme.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see you’re still censoring to shape the narrative and silence wrongthink discussions. Have you considered you’re not in the right, when both Congress and the Whitehouse have investigated social media censorship?
It's not about silencing wrongthing so much as allowing other topics not to get drowned out by the ragey usual. Snail farming in Ghana is surely not as important as murder in South Africa, but what attracts curiosity more? That's the core question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In the unlikely event that Congress or the Whitehouse take an interest in HN moderation, I'll be happy to share with…
> In the unlikely event that Congress or the Whitehouse take an interest in HN moderation, I'll be happy to share with them how we approach this.
“I’m doing the same things that triggered Congressional and Presidential investigations, and plan to continue until they harass me directly.”
You’re such an upstanding member of society.
I sincerely hope they do investigate you, because I believe your authoritarian censorship has infected other technology websites, and is the place many people at Google et al learned to censor for “civility”.
The exact thing that is under investigation.
And to anyone who feels silenced by dang, I suggest you reach out to your congressional representatives — and report the instances of censorship for narrative control you observe. This is an issue, and dang’s pretenses aside, it is being investigated as a serious social problem.
It’s time to standup to leftwing bullies silencing people who don’t agree as “offensive”, because those same leftwing bullies devolve into angry shouting when confronted by opposing views.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#75This 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…
> A local agriculture will drive down the cost of food Is this true? In my experience the cheapest food is rarely almost never locally produced. It may be marketing and the demand for local food is higher. Long supply chains have a lot of value add. Sure there is cost to transporting and storing the food, but the process has other efficiencies that more than make up for the cost. I've even read stories about Central…
As someone who lives in Africa, I can assure you that the cheapest food around is locally grown. My guess for why is that import duties make a sizable chunk portion of the cost and that the infrastructure for keeping things cold/fresh is expensive or non-existent, driving up the risks and costs of importing fresh items.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#76Earlier 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…
Where do you get this number, $2,392 per year? I can tell you that for me, it's way more than that.
> I can tell you that for me, it's way more than that.
I would suspect the average HN reader tends more towards upper-middle class than the average nationally.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#77What 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.
There were a lot of "Gen X" stories around 10-20 years ago. Controversy, in this case pitting one tribe against another, creates cash.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#78This 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…
> A local agriculture will drive down the cost of food Is this true? In my experience the cheapest food is rarely almost never locally produced. It may be marketing and the demand for local food is higher. Long supply chains have a lot of value add. Sure there is cost to transporting and storing the food, but the process has other efficiencies that more than make up for the cost. I've even read stories about Central…
It really depends. In high cost of labor countries, the long supply chain likely is cheaper due to many small compounding reasons.
In low cost of labor countries, I've seen the exact opposite. It's probably not very profitable in the US to setup a vegetable stand for 12 hours a day along a highway for $10/hr of sales. In many countries it is - you have a market garden and put one of the grandparents/children/cousins/etc. manning the retail operation. A single western tourist can make your entire day profitable (including opportunity costs) assuming no other sales.
In my experience you pay a huge premium in the US for locally grown (e.g. weekend farmers markets) - but in other countries it's the opposite - supermarkets are pretty expensive, and the "local farmer" markets are a quarter of the price.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're importing a large amount of their food from Europe as the article states they very well can lower the cost by producing it locally. Even if they're less efficient than the Europeans in doing so.
I'm not sure they can, actually. The wheat fields of Kansas or the Ukraine are so vastly more productive than trying to grow crops in a tropical climate.
Plus a lot of those fields of grain are subsidized during times of plenty for national security (and other) reasons.
Re: Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling Soil Once Meant Shame
#80in 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.
Africa is a fairly large continent and its countries are varied in their cultures, languages, government institutions and politics. Ghana is among the safer, more developed and faster growing African nations, and is far, far safer than SA.
This is both off topic and a flamewar topic, which the site guidelines ask people not to introduce.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please do not use such generalizations on HN.