I came across the following piece thanks to the Economist's View blog.  Below the excerpt are my comments. 

A breakthrough against hunger by Jeffrey D. Sachs 

Today's world hunger crisis is unprecedentedly severe and requires urgent measures. Nearly one billion people are trapped in chronic hunger - perhaps 100 million more than two years ago. Spain is taking global leadership in combating hunger by inviting world leaders to Madrid in late January to move beyond words to action.

The benefits of some donor help can be remarkable. Peasant farmers in Africa, Haiti, and other impoverished regions currently plant their crops without the benefit of high-yield seed varieties and fertilizers. The result is a grain yield (for example, maize) that is roughly one-third less than what could be achieved with better farm inputs. African farmers produce roughly one ton of grain per hectare, compared with more than four tons per hectare in China, where farmers use fertilizers heavily.

African farmers know that they need fertilizer; they just can't afford it. With donor help, they can. Not only do these farmers then feed their families, but they also can begin to earn market income and to save for the future.

There is now widespread agreement on the need for increased donor financing for small farmers (those with two hectares or less of land, or impoverished pastoralists), which is especially urgent in Africa. The UN Secretary General led a steering group last year that determined that African agriculture needs around $8 billion per year in donor financing - roughly four times the current total - with a heavy emphasis on improved seeds, fertilizer, irrigation systems, and extension training.

Dozens of low-income, food-deficit countries, perhaps as many as 40-50, have elaborated urgent programs for increased food production by small farms, but are currently held back by the lack of donor funding.

Many individual donor countries have declared that they are now prepared to increase their financial support for smallholder agriculture, but are searching for the appropriate mechanisms to do so. The current aid structures are inadequate. The more than 20 bilateral and multilateral donor agencies for agriculture are highly fragmented and of insufficient scale individually and collectively.

Despite the dedicated efforts of many professionals, the response to the hunger crisis remains utterly inadequate. The 2008 planting seasons came and went with much too little additional help for impoverished small farmers. African countries search endlessly, and mostly fruitlessly, for the small amounts of funding needed for their purchases of fertilizer and improved seeds.

My colleagues and I, serving on an advisory committee for the Spanish initiative, have recommended that donors pool their funds into a single international account, which we call the Financial Coordination Mechanism (FCM). These pooled funds would enable farmers in poor countries to obtain the fertilizer, improved seed varieties, and small-scale irrigation equipment that they urgently need.

Poor countries would receive prompt and predictable financing for agricultural inputs from a single account, rather than from dozens of distinct and fragmented donors. By pooling financial resources into a single-donor FCM, aid programs' administrative costs could be kept low, the availability of aid flows could be assured, and poor countries would not have to negotiate 25 times in order to receive help.

The time for business as usual is over. The donors promised to double aid to Africa by 2010, but are still far off track. Indeed, during the past 20 years, they actually cut aid for agriculture programs, and only now are reversing course.

Meanwhile, a billion people go hungry each day. We need a breakthrough that is demonstrable, public, clear, and convincing, that can mobilize the public's hearts and minds, and that can demonstrate success. History can be made in Madrid at the end of January, when the world's richest and poorest countries converge to seek solutions to the global hunger crisis. The lives of the billion poorest people depend on it.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

China might have much higher crop yields than Africa but they also have a huge pollution problem caused partly by agricultural run-off. Studies have shown that organic crops yield more than conventional during droughts but yield 9-20% less during normal years (1). Given the occurence of droughts in Africa it seems growing organic in Africa should be looked at closer. I think Africa certainly needs intense agricultural education and improved seed varieties among other things but I strongly question whether heavy fertilizer use should be part of the best course of action. Soaking the soil in fertilizers might be the quickest solution but not the most effective long term.

WSJ misleading headline of the hour

The WSJ has a short piece out on probable Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the headline is extremely misleading. The headline is "Longtime Crisis Manager Pleases Wall Street, Mystifies Some Democrats".

The problem is that the article only quotes one person who questions the pick and that person, Andy Stern, is uninformed, as mentioned in the very next paragraph.

But Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, said recently: "I always worry about somebody who has spent his whole life at the Federal Reserve....I just don't know him."

Mr. Stern was exaggerating. Mr. Geithner, currently president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, has been with the Fed just five years. Unlike most of his predecessors, he has little private-sector or political experience.

With the incoming administration being Democratic, I am expecting an increase in misleading headlines and editorials in the WSJ.

Why Republicans Should Love Community Organizers

From A VC:

"If McCain and Palin are the really the defender of conservative notions like citizen's right to make decisions for themselves, and the rights of community groups like churches and other non government entities to empower people, they'd be celebrating community organization. But they only have one strategy which is to stick the knife in Obama and twist it and draw enough blood so that they win again."

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/09/community-organ.html

Palin = Bush

From the NY Times:

"Aides traveling with Ms. Palin have reported back to associates that she is a fast study -- asking few questions of her policy briefers but quickly repeating back their main points -- who already has considerable ease and experience before cameras.

“A former aide in Alaska who had helped prepare Ms. Palin for her campaign debates there said she had a talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites. The aide said she generally prefers light preparatory materials to heavy briefing books, and prefers walking through potential questions and answers with aides to holding mock sessions.”


Just what we need, another Republican politician who is intellectually lazy.

Typical Hypocritical Republicans - Jon Stewart exposes

With the nomination of Sarah Palin for vice president the hypocrisy has reached a new level. I didn't know that was possible.  Newt Gingrich is the guest.

Fox News Jokes About Killing Obama

Don't think much comment is needed other than to say this is despicable even for Fox News.

SNL - Suze Orman sketch

SNL has done several skits making fun of "financial guru" Suze Orman and they are quite good. Here is one of them: