run those little farmers out of business. That is what happened in the 1950s here in the USA. Today many of the chickens we eat both from the store and in restaurants come from corporate farms. That drives a lot of people back into poverty. My father was one of the small farmers forced out in the 50s. It was not a good time for rural areas.

It's the same when any large corporation moves in, doubly devastating for individual farmers in poorer nations whose gov'ts will not protect them against these giants.

I don't know if it's against the rule here or not to post comments following an article, but this was a great one, imo:

Zooty2Shoes AmandaSowards • 2 days ago ?
Amanda, I think the problem is far deeper than you have made out.

Smallholdings in most African countries are essential for a number of reasons: They feed the family, firstly; Excess production is sold to vendors in towns; Rotation of local crops utilizes the local geography, climate and ingrained local knowledge to be able to produce multiple crops year on year, without destroying the soils; The cycle of growing is built on utilization of all resources - from human and animal waste composted to fertilizer, straw, vines, etc. used for roofing, utensils, artifacts, chickens working as little tractors and natural pesticides in among the crops, etc. Those cycles of village agriculture just work.

There are many interlinked processes that have evolved over hundreds of generations and introducing an imbalance into that system that could end up with introducing poverty and hunger where it currently is in balance.

Africa is, in biomass, completely able to feed itself, but over the last 30 years Western corporations have turned small holdings into large farms for export, pushing up the price of food to the extent that locals can't afford to eat - which is what is the biggest driver of poverty and malnutrition. Kenya has effectively become Europe's greenhouse, providing expensive air-transported fruits and vegetables into European winter - but the result of that is a huge price-hike in local markets over the last 30 years.

If small farmers change from their staple crops to a US-style monoculture, they may get wealthy, but there will be no 'give' in the system. All it will take is for one enterprising government official to decide (on the back of a large payment, no doubt) to implement a massive state-subsidized soy or chicken farm to leave these smallholders with no market and no easily usable food. To have to return to their original method of farming after implementing a monoculture isn't easy and in a hand-to-mouth agriculture could end up with an entire season of starvation.

There are a lot of good things we in the West can do to improve on African farming methods - introducing factory farming and monoculture in the name of 'efficiency' are not something we should contemplate. Look at our own awful factory farming methods and the shocking state of food security in the US - antibiotic-laden chicken and beef (to the extent that most of the developed world won't buy our produce!), GMO crops with a designed lifecycle to ensure you are tithed to Monsanto, corn syrup in everything - these are not practices we want to be exporting to a continent trying to bring itself up to a modern, Western technological level.

Improving the storage of food, improving irrigation and cultivation, improving pest control and ultimately, yield - those are the kinds of thing we should be doing, but as is usual, the majority of 'improvement' programs are driven by corporations who have something other than altruism at their focus.