"sw" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

"sw" wrote in message
...
Oz wrote:

The hard thing to realise is they are in a catch twenty-two
situation. They only have just enough to live on now. But
what about next year and the one after that and the one
after that - when their wheat yields fall even more, when
they have to go 15km instead of 10 every day for wood, when
the old apple trees give up the ghost and havenâ?Tt been
replaced.

Sustainable????

Clearly not.

it certainly looks grim. The sensible thing to do in that sort of
area is
for them to diversify out of food production, get jobs where their
labour
will undercut European wage rates and buy food in.
Even a part time job that paid enough to let them get a proper diet
would
help break the downward spiral.

Leaving his family behind or starving in slums near the city. Being
poor in
a rural setting is bad it is worse in an urban one.


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.


Ah, you mean give them some power. There's a reason why this rarely
happens.

Michael Saunby