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It's odd, the article has this to say early on, "In Haiti, you can often make as much or more through temporary aid funding than you can from productive endeav
by M_Grey 10y ago
It's odd, the article has this to say early on,
"In Haiti, you can often make as much or more through temporary aid funding than you can from productive endeavors. Which means that, even as the market for unique coffee with an interesting backstory booms, cultivating it in the country has become as much about chasing charity as it is about trying to run a viable enterprise that produces excellent coffee year after year."
Then it spends the better part of a page and a half detailing all of the issues of political instability and so on which actually are the major factors and have nothing to do with "chasing charity".
- legulere 10y agoWell the site this is on is after all "reason.com - free minds and free markets".
- M_Grey 10y agoI see, so it's just the required ideological plug, got it.
- jeromegv 10y agoIt's the Koch brothers afterall
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JBReefer 10y agoPlease don't be dismissive on HN
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- M_Grey 10y agoI'm not sure, I asked a question which turns out was in fact answered with some form of, "Because it's pushing an agenda". All he did was inform me of the nature of that agenda, while another poster informed me of the source. Sometimes context does matter.
- whyenot 10y ago> Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation.[1] I don't think you should be dismissive, but you still should be aware that the magazine does promote a particular political point of view, and read their (often very good) articles aware of that context. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_(magazine)
- makomk 10y agoUnderstanding the political position of Reason is important to understanding their articles. For example, elsewhere in this discussion someone mentions that poor roads are a problem. This isn't something that Reason would bring up because they see businesses as strong, self-sufficient organizations only held back by government interference, and admitting how much they depend on government-created infrastructure would damage that argument.
- lintiness 10y agoyou don't think "political instability and so on" are related to chasing charity?
- M_Grey 10y agoIf you can find the link between the two in that article, please show me.
- lintiness 10y agomaybe it was so obvious it didn't need linking.
- M_Grey 10y agoThen you should have no problem showing me that link, obvious as you claim it to be.
- ars 10y agoPolitical instability encourages short term thinking/planning, since long term is too risky. The fastest way to make money from coffee is aid agencies. If there was more long term thinking then the actual coffee would be a better way to make money. If there was no aid then ??? I'm not sure - either they would abandon coffee entirely, or they would be forced to actually try to grow coffee.
- M_Grey 10y agoIf your long term thinking indicates that you need to grow the food you need to eat, that year, then how does coffee or aid enter the equation at all?
- ars 10y agoMost food is grown on a single year basis - grow that year, eat that year. Coffee is a tree it takes many many years to grow and develop. It's quicker to "harvest" money from aid agencies. PS. Your reply is very strange, since the answer to your question is quite obvious. Are you actually trying to get info, or are you trying to push the message you desire via questions?
- cmiles74 10y agoThe theory in the article is that the political instability have encouraged the coffee farmers to concentrate on short-term gain rather than that long-term view that is required to grow a coffee plant crop. They begin outlining this idea on page two, which is arguably far too deep into the article. Because that transition has been never-ending, an entire generation has now passed since 1986 where uncertainty about the political future is the norm. And the political bleeds into everything, including the day-to-day choices made by all Haitians, rural farmers included. And then a little further on they finally tie it to coffee If you're unsure what the political winds will bring next year, or who might be in power and how it will affect you, why would you invest in a long-term cash crop that takes years to pay off? To make sure you can provide for your family, you'd be wiser to focus on the food-crop harvest that's just a few months away, which is exactly what Haitian farmers do. Later on in the article, they spend time on what the aid organizations are actually doing and how this is counter-productive if their goal is to truly help Haitian farmers become self sufficient.
- M_Grey 10y agoI don't have any problem with the link between political instability, desperate poverty, and subsistence farming... it's not exactly a new or controversial link after all. It's really just the specific claim I quoted, which as far as I can see is then immediately abandoned.
- ctdonath 10y agoHow is it abandoned? The whole rest of the article describes how it's more profitable to request charitable aid to facilitate coffee farming than it is to actually do long-term coffee farming. The farmer first depicted doesn't want to cut down his badly-maintained coffee tree precisely because those few fruits it produces lets him legitimately say "I grow coffee, but need money/equipment donations to improve it", garnering cash or sellable equipment that he can proceed to buy food with; if he actually applied those donations to seriously improve his farming, there's no way he can get that tree to produce enough to greater return than just "chasing [and abusing] charity". You see the point abandoned, I see the point fairly summarizing the entire article.
- samyxp17 10y agoThe author touches on a problematic issue that most developed nations tend to ignore. Poverty and under development isn’t due to a lack of resources; it is merely the end result of a complete lack of responsible governance and institutions. The absence of responsible governance and institutions cannot somehow be offset by directly interacting with individuals (peasants, out of work folks, women in need, etc.. ) who are basically desperate for any help right now, not long term solutions which may impact their nation as a whole. It’s easier for NGOs to create all sorts of dependencies by handing over tools and practices to small communitities here and there and tell the world how incredibly successful they’ve been. As soon as the funds dry up or the particular NGO moves on to another project or country, all progress stops. Fix the governance and build solid institutions that are capable of establishing and enforcing the rules of the road and the goals that need to be met and you’ll finally have a map to real and sustainable development.
- astazangasta 10y agoThis is how we (the US) fix the governance: http://www.voltairenet.org/article159651.html http://www.voltairenet.org/article159651.html
- samyxp17 10y agoUnfortunate, but frankly no one has yet figured out how to actually solve the governance problem. Heard of a US based startup recently, working on making perishable consumer goods in the third world more resilient in order to make up for the lack of a cold chain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain) in those poor countries. However the lack of a cold chain is another symptom of a deeper problem, yet applying another band-aid is so much more satisfying!