The world's richest man has a solution to Africa's hunger problem - and it's not a good one
He’s done it again. Bill Gates has saved the world.
At least, he has put out his annual letter in which the world’s richest man tells us how well things are going in the world and how a whole host of serious global problems are going to be ‘solved’ soon.
Last year, he devoted his letter to busting three ‘myths that block progress for the poor’. In it, he expounded the triumphalist argument that ‘the world is better than it has ever been’, the implication being that it is aid, alongside the benevolent hand of the market, that has helped people out of poverty.
Unfortunately, the world is not doing as well as he says. In our recently released report – The Poor are Getting Richer and Other Dangerous Delusions – we showed that there are now almost double the number of people living on under $2 a day in sub-Saharan Africa than there were in 1981.
And the countries, like Venezuela and China, where there has been significant poverty reduction have actually received very little aid and have often ignored many of the economic policies advocated by the World Bank, IMF and big business moguls like Gates.
In his new letter, Gates has turned his attention to a more specific set of problems, but the same triumphalist tone dominates.
His ‘big bet’ is that the lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history. Child deaths will fall by half, Africa will be able to feed itself, mobile banking and better software will radically improve the lives of the poor.
I can only hope that he’s right. But if there’s one thing for sure, it’s that if we want to attain these goals, we shouldn’t follow some of the policies that he advocates.
For one of his targets, halving child deaths, Gates doesn’t even say how he sees this happening. Although the reference to pharmaceutical companies donating drugs suggests that he sees the answer in charity by the very companies that are killing many poor people by denying them cheap generic drugs. Suffice to say, I don’t share his optimism on this.
But it is his proposed solution to Africa’s hunger problem which is potentially the most dangerous.
As with pretty much every global problem one could care to mention, Gates’ answer to the problem of African hunger involves business, charity and that wonderfully vague concept of ‘innovation’.
Gates compares crop yields in Africa to those of the USA and concludes that the problem would be solved if only Africa used more intensive farming methods and introduced new strains of corn and wheat.
What he doesn’t say explicitly in the letter, is that these new grains and ‘innovative’ farming methods will come as part of a corporate takeover of African agriculture. Gates’ charitable foundation is a major backer of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a scheme that has been criticized because of the involvement of huge agribusiness corporation Monsanto.
AGRA is based on a similar green revolution in Asia, which raised crop yields at the cost of bringing increased rural inequality and decreased biodiversity. Asia’s green revolution certainly made the food production statistics look better, but the intensive industrial farming methods it favoured were often actually quite damaging for the rural communities the project was theoretically helping.
This is the model that Gates wants in Africa. Out with the inefficient peasant farmers, in with corporate, large-scale, intensive farms.
But if food production increases, isn’t it worth getting rid of peasant farming and replacing it with large-scale farms, despite the negative side-effects?
This argument makes sense on a superficial level. However, while industrial agriculture can increase crop yields, there are other more sustainable ways of achieving the same result.
In fact, the alternatives to industrial agriculture can be more effective in combating hunger. Small-scale sustainable agriculture (agroecology) can, by cutting out the corporates and their fat profit margins, feed more people, more sustainably, than any large-scale farm using patented seed to produce food for export. Indeed, a recent study (using data from 57 developing counties) showed that farmers switching to sustainable methods on average increased their yields by 73 per cent.
Instead of trying to fight African farmers into submission and turning them into a disenfranchised corporate labour force, Gates should be promoting their freedom to adopt practices that help improve their livelihoods.
Another part of the answer may lie in allowing Africa to go back to the future – the continent was self-sufficient in food in the 1960s. Since then, African countries have been forced to open their markets to foreign imports by countries that hypocritically preach the gospel of free markets while heavily protecting their own agricultural industries with subsidies and tariffs. Unravelling this unfair state of affairs could help African producers compete.
Bill Gates probably genuinely believes he is a force for progress. But until he wakes up to the reality that more sustainable and effective alternatives exist to the mainstream corporate solutions, he could end up doing more harm than good.
Alex Scrivener is policy officer at Global Justice Now. Follow him on Twitter
38 Responses to “Why Bill Gates’ ‘big bet for the future’ is wrong”
Lesmond Nyjacks
Leon, you are overwhelmed by your own anger and hatefulness, but you simply must accept that Bill Gates will never indulge you in your wicked fantasies.
Pol Pot is dead, you and your fellow travelers will never be allowed to bring back the killing fields.
It is over, you have lost, your hateful authoritarianism is of the last century, and it caused unparalled disasters wherever your beloved friends held power.
Kangaface
So Gates finally sorted the problems recounted in the article, “Bill Gates can’t build a toilet”?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/opinion/bill-gates-cant-build-a-toilet.html?_r=0
Unfortunately Gates’ ‘solutions’ for agriculture — hypothetical drought-tolerant GMO monoculture crops and the chemicals they’re grown with — will do more harm than good, and that is emphasised in the article above. They also will not feed people — most such crops are cash crops sold for export and go into animal feed and biofuels in rich countries.
adamjrichards
I have always had sympathy for the aspirations of the left, and contempt for the poorly-disguised selfishness of the right, but you lose that support from me and from droves of rational people with the hectoring and bullying, as displayed in this article. So much of what the left wants from people is dependent on somehow convincing people to care more about each other and less about themselves, but I’ve never seen any evidence that you can talk people into being a better species. You waste time and energy on such destined-to-lose projects as combatting GMOs and capitalism, while Bill Gates, whom you obviously hate, actually does things for people, other than “educating them” to believe in your patently unrealistic philosophies. Decrying GMOs and capitalism does nothing but alienate the technocrats who do the real work of running the world, and drives them into the hands of the party-package politicians who make everything into “freedom” issues. It doesn’t matter whether you’re right about capitalism or not; when the refugee camps continue to swell and the environment continues to suffer the pains of overpopulation. Get off your self-righteous pedestal and DO SOMETHING. Impress me with actions, instead of trying to change who I am and how I think. Bill Gates has done more in ten years than you will do in your lifetime.
chimpanzoo
What are these “more sustainable and effective alternatives” to industrial mechanised agriculture? I see them touted all over the place by people who are – quite rightly – opposed to corporate monopolisation of food production, but there’s never any specifics. Also, if these alternatives exist and are viable in Africa – why just there? Why not Europe as well? I mean, industrial mechanised agriculture is a resource-hungry glutton which causes great harm to the environment, so we should bring these alternative methods in over here without delay.
Anne O'Brien
Look up the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) . Look up Pasture cropping. Look up aquaponics. Look up holistic management. Look up the work of the Soil Food Web Institute. Look up permaculture. It’s right before your eyes if you would just observe what people are already quietly getting on with.