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Howard Buffett’s Hope for Africa’s FuturePosted on Aug 17, 2011
Earlier this month, Howard Buffett—the philanthropist son of the “Sage of Omaha”—penned a Huffington Post article defending a project within the U.N.’s World Food Program called “Purchase for Progress” and offered his vision of an ideal future for farmers in the global south. Rather than feeding the world’s hungry with food purchased from U.S. and European agriculturalists, that program nobly does business with farmers in developing nations, stimulating needy economies and providing food to hungry people at the same time. But its long-term goal, according to Buffett, is to give those farmers the education and training necessary to become permanent suppliers to the giants of global agribusiness—corporations that deal in industrialized, market-selected commodity crops, rather than the simple staple foods people need to feed themselves. —ARK
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By ardee, August 18, 2011 at 12:29 pm Link to this comment
kerryrose, August 18 at 12:38 pm
OK read the link. So Buffet junior thinks in capitalist terms, no surprise there I think. Meanwhile he is doing a deal of good for those destitute farmers dontcha agree?
The future is yet to be written while people starve in the present. Buffet the younger is teaching them to feed themselves while circumventing the ADM’s and the like, just the fact that they are so dead set against his work makes me a supporter of his concept. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
If, in the course of future events these little farmers begin to do as Mother Jones envisions, my opinion would change, if I am still alive to offer one that is. In the mean time critiquing Buffet’s work is to ignore the real good and those who would die of starvation in the meanwhile.
Report thisBy kerryrose, August 18, 2011 at 11:38 am Link to this comment
Here is a link for the guys who didn’t read this article carefully enough.
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/08/howard-buffett-wrong-about-africa
Report thisBy kerryrose, August 18, 2011 at 11:05 am Link to this comment
For those of you praising Buffet:
You had better follow the link and read the entire article.
Report thisBy ardee, August 18, 2011 at 1:43 am Link to this comment
Daye, August 17 at 3:45 pm
It is refreshing to read a positive comment regarding anyone named Buffet ( Jimmy excepted) around here. One usually finds some sort of knee jerk negativity regarding any charitable act by this family.
Report thisBy kerryrose, August 17, 2011 at 5:28 pm Link to this comment
The term for this is simple. It is ‘land grab.’
Report thisBy Daye, August 17, 2011 at 2:45 pm Link to this comment
I side fully with this article’s author, & having
lived where I watched suddenly industrialized
farming being imposed upon peasants by
American interests, money & power I must go
one step further, & insist that the evil likely to
come from this brutal worship of market
‘efficiency’ & mightiness & the inevitably
consequent distribution of newly created wealth
upwards to the rich - as opposed to respect for
people who will be driven into degradation &
starvation as their means of survival in ancient
labor intensive economies is taken away from
them by market dogma & machines - is a form
of holocaust-by-hypocrisy, in which capitalist
murderers & torturers conduct mass destruction
under the guise that they are Saviors, come to
deliver all persons below them from savagery &
poverty.
Long live the Buffetts & the Gates.
And long live Cecil John Rhodes, for he was no
Report thisdifferent.