Oz wrote:

sw writes
Yes. Ideally an aid agency would arrive with information and funding for
local schemes promoting alternative cropping strategies, low-tech water
retention, primary health care and education. Then at least the people
have a chance of producing sufficient food to feed themselves and their
children, and start to reduce the birth rate, which eventually means
they all have a better chance of finding the time and energy to invent
other projects earning money from outside the area. If someone flies in
and dumps a factory on them it might provide an opportunity to earn
cash, but it'll almost certainly be a starvation wage with no hope of
anything better.

I often wonder if the pharoes didn't have the right idea.

When there is a famine, move in with large quantities of food and then
pay people in food to do major works.

A drought is an excellent time to do terracing, make reservoirs, dam
rivers (well, weir them anyway), build roads, schools, medical centres
and suchlike.

That way a drought could be used for good rather than harm.

Absolutely. Funny you should mention that, there's a piece in the paper
about a local charity operating in Rajasthan. Started when a local
doctor travelled out with a school group and saw just how bad things can
be in a poor agricultural area. They raised UKP40,000 the first year to
fund education, health care and women's programmes, and are now close to
UKP100,000 per year. When there was a major drought, resulting in both
food shortage and unemployment -- there's no work for ag workers if
there are no crops -- the charity mobilised money to build concrete
watertanks and construct contour bunding to catch surface water on the
fields, paying the ag workers to do the work. End result, they had money
to buy food and the improvements improved their lives and crops in the
long term. *That's* how aid should work.

regards
sarah


--
Waist deep, neck deep
We'll be drowning before too long
We're neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damned fools keep yelling to push on