No Green Revolution for Africa

the push to privatize government functions and insistence upon "free trade" that is too often unfair has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a hunger crisis for millions of people in many African nations, researchers conclude in a new study.Market reforms that began in the mid-1980s and were supposed to aid economic growth have actually backfired in some of the poorest nations in the world, and just in recent years led to multiple food riots, scientists report Feb 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The sophisticated techniques and cash-crop emphasis of the "Green Revolution" may have caused more harm than help in many locations, the study concluded.

Poor farmers who had no land security, made $1 a day and had their life savings of $600 hidden under a mattress. "These people were then asked to compete with some of the most efficient agricultural systems in the world, and they simply couldn't do it," said Laurence Becker, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. "With tariff barriers removed, less expensive imported food flooded into countries, some of which at one point were nearly self-sufficient in agriculture. Many people quit farming and abandoned systems that had worked in their cultures for centuries."

Many people in African nations, Becker said, farm local land communally, as they have been doing for generations, without title to it or expensive equipment -- and have developed systems that may not be advanced, but are functional. They are often not prepared to compete with multinational corporations or sophisticated trade systems. The loss of local agricultural production puts them at the mercy of sudden spikes in food costs around the world. And some of the farmers they compete with in the U.S., East Asia and other nations receive crop supports or subsidies of various types, while they are told they must embrace completely free trade with no assistance.

"A truly free market does not exist in this world," Becker said. "We don't have one, but we tell hungry people in Africa that they are supposed to."

Historically corrupt governments continue to be a problem, the researchers said."In many African nations people think of the government as looters, not as helpers or protectors of rights,"