China's farming history now misapplied in Africa

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/MK01Cb01.html

ST PAUL, Minnesota - As sub-Saharan Africa grapples with high food prices in some regions and famine in others, many experts argue that increasing food production through a programme of hybrid seeds and chemical inputs is the way to go.

This approach, marketed as a "New Green Revolution" for Africa, is increasingly supported by a triumphant telling of China's history with this method in the 1970s and 1980s. This Chinese success story is not only distorted, but it is being misapplied in Africa.

China's Great Famine of 1958-1961 reportedly killed 36 million people. This was a seminal moment for the country and, from that point forward, producing enough food would be a major priority. China would subsequently increase grain production dramatically


between 1960 and 2000, with wheat output increasing eightfold, exiling the ghost of famine to the margins of that country's collective social imagination.

According to many Chinese and Western observers, these stunning productivity increases were due to two factors. First, the Chinese aggressively embraced a Green Revolution approach. They would both borrow hybrid seeds from the West and develop their own such technologies.