Organic Farming in AFRICA - A Dose Of Reality

[Guest guest]

Howdy Kunzang,

 

Good it is to see you posting. Knowing who you are and what you think its

not surprising to me to see your post and glad I am that you decided to come

out and play. :-)

 

> > Once we get past the smoke and mirrors we can see

> > that Organic Farming is a luxury for the privileged.

> [snip]

>

> Butch, You know I love ya. You know I love the

> generosity of all your information and all the time

> you give making it available. And you know I often

> even agree with what you say, but this is just flat

> totally and completely wrong! There is only ONE point

> in the whole post with which I can agree at all and

> that's that gardening can be therapeutic for the

> gardner.

 

Thank you ma'am and I love you too .. that it is both logical and normal

cause we are Lovable Folks. ;-)

 

Also normal it is that you would agree that gardening is great therapy.

Aside from these two points I reckon that its also normal on most News

Groups that .. (1) some folks don't read ANY long posts .. (2) some folks

read only those portions they want to and miss the point of the post. ;-)

 

Lemme tell you that I have worked hard to answer your post .. was replying

on the list system and was about to hit Send .. then I touched some key on

my keyboard and all I had written disappeared. It went back to the main

message link .. so this is the second reply. ;-)

 

> The rest, each and every point made, is the " industrial

> agriculture " point of view which only serves likes of

> Monsanto/ADM/BigPharma corporate interests.

 

Each and every point? I oughta send that post to them and ask them for a

bitta Bakshish . ;-)

 

Seriously, I think your comments fit you into Category (2) above.

 

> I could write a book on what's wrong with the ideas

> expressed in the " organic farming " post, but

> fortunately I don't have to---several other folk have

> already done so starting in, oh, around 1930ish.

 

Folks who believe in something write books that support their beliefs.

Sometimes they write to disagree with the beliefs of others but still, they

are writing in support of their beliefs. This is not unusual and its not

only those who write books and articles who do this .. folks like you and me

do it too. ;-)

 

Though Organic Farming in Africa and Climate Change are both controversial

subjects they are within the scope of discussion on this list .. as approved

by the List Mama. So instead of writing a book .. why don't you take the

time to address each of the points I made instead of making a blanket

statement saying the entire post is rubbish? ;-)

 

Being as I love you too I'll not put you on the spot to do this because I

doubt that you or other list members I know (that is only those who post)

can do it .. because .. but two points I made are worthy of disagreement.

My lead in to the Left Leaning New York Times article, " Ending Famine,

Simply by Ignoring the Experts " , was very short (for me) .. short enough

that it is repeated below and further on .. herein. I wrote:

 

> Once we get past the smoke and mirrors we can see that Organic Farming is

a luxury for the privileged.

 

The context and intent of this statement should have been clear from the

article that followed .. it pertained to Africa.

 

For those who skip over subject lines I have modified this post to read that

way. ;-)

 

I stand behind the above statement .. within the context that it was

intended .. in Africa . . or in other places where folks are concerned about

filling the bellies of their younguns right now instead of wondering which

brand of Organic peanut butter should they buy tomorrow.

 

I would enjoy seeing comments from any list member that show that Organic

Farming is keeping folks from starving in such places .. and an example of

one or two small villages in areas where there is plenty of green materials

and manure will not count .. folks in those areas are not usually the ones

who are starving and they have generally, traditionally practiced Organic

Farming as a matter of necessity.

 

Then I wrote:

 

You and I and most other Westerners can grow our vegetables in

our garden plots organically .. without pesticides, fungicides or

commercial fertilizers and they will be more healthy than those grown

with pesticides and fungicides .. though not really more healthy than

those grown with commercial fertilizers.

 

Aside from the point on Commercial fertilizers .. which Zo disagreed with

and has posted a link to support that disagreement .. I see nothing worthy

of disagreement. Thank you Zo .. I will reply to your post and discuss

that link later. :-)

 

Then I wrote:

 

In our gardens we can use crop rotation and compost to fertilize the

soil .. and ladybugs and such to control pests .. and of course

gardening is great therapy for those living in today's rat race.

 

And you agree with this so all is well there. ;-)

 

Then I wrote:

 

However, classic Organic Farming is not practical or economically

feasible on a very large commercial scale .. and it is doubtful that it will

ever be practical for even small garden plots in countries where folks must

depend on crops to avoid starvation.

 

If you disagree with this .. you haven't made that disagreement clear enough

for this ol' boy to get the point. Chris sorta disagreed .. I reckon. She

posted a link that was in opposition to my points.

 

Also .. somebody please tell me that Organic Farming is cheaper than

Conventional methods and that Organic produce is less costly. Can anybody

do that? Lemme hear a YEA! ;-)

 

Organic Farming has been around for tens of thousands of years .. and modern

Organic Agriculture is nothing new .. in the West it was hot back in the

1930s .. then it cooled off and didn't warm up again until the 1980s and now

the experienced theorists and idealists are saying that it is the solution

to end hunger in Africa. I'd like to know which international organization

has done something to prove this .. and I mean more than little pilot

projects that look good on a web site and help to get funding from those who

are easily impressed .

 

If it is such a good idea then why are none of the talkers walking the walk

instead of just talking the talk? I've seen a fair bit of Africa and odds

are that with over 1,600 members on the list there are some others who have

experience in Africa. I would be interested in their comments .. idealism

is fine, I guess, but input from those who have walked the ground is more

credible. Short vacation trips or visits to North Africa (other than Chad

and Sudan) probably should not count because Africa Above the Sahara (except

for refugees suffering from causes no form of agriculture can prevent) are

doing fairly well .. it is Africa Below the Sahara that is in Deep Doo Doo!

 

Read this from the European Regional Development Fund:

http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/international_programme/ip_crop_ssa.php

 

Please read it all .. not just the parts that you might agree with.

 

Then I wrapped it up with:

 

Use of manure as fertilizer is a source of E-coli contamination .. but its

commonly used in the poorer countries due to lack of ability to purchase

commercial fertilizers. Crop rotation can enrich the soil but not every

nitrogen producing plant can be grown everywhere in the world. It would be

great if poor countries could farm the insects needed to control other pests

but its not practical and I know of no insect that can control swarms of

locusts when they devour crops.

 

USDA organic standards state that manure must be composted and reach a

sterilizing temperature. If raw manure is used (a norm in the 3rd World,

you must wait 120 days between application and harvest. That is four months

and as we know from recent E-coli problems in the USA .. its not always

practiced here and its dang sure not practiced in most 3rd World

countries.

 

Some of the Global Warming groupies who might also be vegetarians might

suggest that we kill all the cows anyway because their farting and belching

is contributing to the problem. Damned if we do and damned if we don't.

;-)

 

More on availability of manure in my reply to Zo. Its not just a matter of

poop scooping and composting.

 

If you disagree with any of my other points lemme know cause I am not too

sure exactly what it is you disagree with. Maybe you disagree with the NYT

article. Maybe Malawi didn't really come back from the brink of famine.

 

Maybe its not really true that the World Bank (who I dislike as much as I do

the DisUnited Nations) and some Western nations got Malawi into deeper Doo

Doo and President Bingu wa Mutharika got them out of the Doo Doo by not

listening to the West .. and successfully feeding his people.

 

Maybe he was wrong to use Commercial fertilizer. Maybe he should have told

his people that that they are backward and lack patience and if a few more

of them go under snakes due to starvation it will be a lot easier to convert

to Organic Farming cause we won't have to feed as many folks as we have now

and we can compost all the dead bodies to help kick off the Organic program.

 

And .. maybe I am being sarcastic but in this case I think it is justified.

;-) ALSO .. I think that repeating the NYT article is justified because

lots of new folks have joined in the last couple of days and they don't know

what we are talking about .. plus .. likely it is that some folks didn't

read it anyway .. maybe they will this time.

 

If the article had been published by the New York Post or the Washington

Times .. both Conservative papers, I can understand Liberals and Greens

questioning it .. but it was from the New York Times, and though they are

not as Liberal as the Los Angeles Times (who is?) they are pretty danged

Liberal and traditionally support Green causes. Maybe they allowed it cause

it showed how screwed up the World Bank is .. they don't like the World Bank

either. ;-)

 

BTW the first thing you have to do is to define

" organic " ... is it the USDA's fairly new legal

definition c. 1997ish (aiding only corporate and

industrial interests) or is it the intention as

understood by the folk who pioneered the INTENT of the

organic movement (sustainable agriculture methods in

addition to lack of chemicals added to soils and

plants.) Once again, the books have already been

written.

 

 

I don't have to define Organic for folks on this list .. to them Organic

Farming means absolutely NO synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or

fertilizers. Of course .. folks do accept one synthetic product .. though

like petroleum its classified as being a natural and organic substance but

that is spin because its not .. that is Urea

 

I'm familiar with the USDA definitions of Organic and also those of a half

dozen U.S. States. I have no interest in being anything other than an

Organic gardener so I don't give a crap what the USDA thinks .. or what

anyone else thinks .. I'll grow my vegetables the way I do everything else

... my way. I've always tried to do my best to do my best and I was pretty

successful doing it .. now that I have a family again I try even harder to

do my best in situations that could impact their health and welfare.

 

I'm not a supporter of American or Multi-National Corporations .. or

Industrial Interests .. I'm not indebted to them, I draw no salary from them

and I owe them no loyalty. I would like them clean up their Corporate

corruption but I also accept that they are a necessary evil. I expect that

a good many folks who are reading this post now agree with me and are buying

their daily bread and paying their mortgage payments because these

" terrible " organizations are employing them or theirs.

 

As for the pioneers .. I know a good bit about Daniel Boone .. and also

about Sir Albert Howard, the Father of Organic Farming .. and a little bit

about Rudolph Steiner and Jerome Rodale. History is one of my hobbies.

 

I also have a bit of dirt under the fingernails experience with Organic

Farming. I spent half my younger years working in the fields .. all that

we grew (except Tobacco) was Organic .. and at the same time I was an active

member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA) and the Kentucky Soil

Conservation Club. I joined the Army two weeks after graduation from high

school to escape those fields.

 

After retirement I opened my own company in Turkey and shortly thereafter

became one of the three founding members of the Black Sea Agri Business

Group, a Non Profit with the mission of modernizing Turkish farming in

Eastern Anatolia by importing American technology and assisting them in

growing the correct grasses for grazing and silage and feeding it to the

correct livestock so that Turkey could again become an exporter of red meat

and feed their people with a lower priced and finer quality of beef. We

also worked projects with other countries in the Black Sea Region. I had

the opportunity to meet and learn a lot from Agriculture Ministers from a

number of East and West European countries as well as Israel and Palestine.

I arranged, organized and attended meetings in D.C. between the Turkish

Agriculture Minister and the USDA .. some of these meetings included

Ministers from other countries.

 

Our organization was head quartered at my company in Ankara (with branches

in Istanbul and Washington, D.C.) so we operated under the scrutiny of the

Turkish government organization that approved NGOs and Non Profits and when

it came time for Turkey to take their turn as President for a year of BSEC (

Black Sea Economic Cooperation Council ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Economic_Cooperation_Business_Council..

I was invited to their meetings and conferences and had the

opportunity

to meet in conference and at cocktail parties many Presidents and Prime

Ministers and their staffs .. and hear discussions concerning agriculture

issues and problems from folks who were operating on the ground. Some of

my ideas and reports were published by newspapers in Turkey and other

countries, and I was able to travel and observe agricultural practices in

member states Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Russia .. and in observer states

Germany, Israel and Tunisia.

 

I was the sole consultant on and supplier of aromatic products for a large

U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) project in Madagascar ..

Organic cultivation of Damask Roses .. that project was completed.

 

Later I consulted on a similar project and worked with an Aide to President

Karzai of Afghanistan and with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) .. that

project was canceled in time because the Taliban regained strength in the

area that we were to start the program in .. the ADB then wisely refused to

finance it.

 

I have not always been a soldier and a source for essential oils .. I have a

bit of Ag experience down where the rubber meets the road. It's been 18

years since I retired from the U.S. Army .. 18 years of experience for me is

just that though I realize that for some folks it means one year of

experience 18 times. My opinions on the subject being discussed were not

formed by reading books that conformed to my way of thinking or searching

the I-Net for the opinions of others .. and I am firmly convinced that

Organic Farming is not NOW the solution to the problems of feeding people in

many nations in Africa. In time it will become a norm .. but not now.

 

My recommendations begin with:

<http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm>

 

(Snipped)

 

I hope anyone who feels strongly either way about that

post will read at least those four recommended books

and educate themselves to a deep level about the

issues and the history involved. Even if you disagree

with me, those books are a good read and will give

plenty of ammunition for further discussion.

 

 

I believe that folks would have to feel mighty strongly about my post to

read four books. ;-) But I ask you this .. do those books justify and

promote Organic Farming only .. or are they concerned with Organic Farming

in Africa as a means to deal with real food shortages now and in the near

future?

 

As for folks needing ammunition for further discussion .. I'm gonna give'em

a lotta opportunity to disagree in some of the replies yet to come .. so

they might wanna clean the dust off'n their front sight .. adjust the rear

sights .. make sure they're not loading their weapon with blank ammo .. then

fire away. But if they do disagree on something I wish they would be

specific as to what it is they disagree with and why they disagree .. like

Zo and Chris did .. cause its too danged hard to shoot at a moving target.

:-)

 

Anyone who wants even more recommendations, need only

ask.

 

 

I hope you get some requests and nice of you it is to offer. :-)

 

Now .. afore I sign off lemme tell y'all how I really feel .. I haven't done

that yet. ;-) I believe that Organic Farming is an Ideal (as in damn

great) idea and in time the entire world will be forced to implement it ..

like it or not. The World Bank and IMF and Western countries will use it as

a hammer to beat other countries into submission .. same as we beat them to

force them to conform with other Western norms .. we call it progress and

modernization and its not all that bad a thing but convincing them of this

is not always easy .. been there and done that..

 

I also believe that those who talk about African countries going Organic

before they are in a position to afford this LUXURY .. before they can FEED

their children instead of watching them die with swollen bellies and limbs

like a skeleton .. before the DisUnited Nations gets off their CORRUPT and

INEFFICIENT asses and does something positive to better the lives of these

unfortunate folks .. should shut up .. go to Africa and see with their own

eyes what is really going down .. and do something besides push their own

idealistic and selfish agendas. Such people upset me more than I am

allowed to write on this list. I've met some face to face and they know

how I feel.

 

There are many Relief Organizations .. some operate just to keep themselves

employed .. its legal .. and any of us can kick off a Non Profit tomorrow

and make some money. Though those that are controlled by the DisUnited

Nations and some other international organizations operate with bureaucratic

handicaps similar to those of teachers in the average U.S. school, I have

been close friends with management folks in UNICEF who were dedicated and

professional and I have a fair handle on their inner workings. In various

roles I've had contact with numerous organizations who had a mission of

helping others .. some did a better job than others.

 

The organization I have TOTAL respect for is Doctors Without Borders .. I

worked with them in August 1999 while working search and rescue following

the earthquake in Turkey which killed close to 22,000 people. NEVER have I

seen more dedicated and professional volunteer folks doing any kind of

work. Up to their armpits in blood while operating out of tents with

generators providing electricity .. those young folks worked on and on and

it was easy to see that some of them were in great need of sleep .. but they

kept on charging. If they are the slightest bit idealists that idealism is

directed toward helping those less fortunate than they are. They are unsung

heroes in my book.

 

Those folks who know little about Africa .. those who push and lobby to get

their way and force systems on people who are not ready for those systems ..

who operate with total disregard for people and are only concerned with

achieving success in order to prove a point .. get their name up in lights

... and be able to stick another feather in their caps .. need their sorry

butts kicked.

 

KD

 

Took a while to answer this one and I hope that my statements were clear

enough so that there is no chance for folks to not understand my opinions.

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch

 

 

 

December 2, 2007

Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts By Celia W. Dugger

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/celia_w_dugger/ind\

ex.html?inline=nyt-per>

 

LILONGWE, Malawi — Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a

disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million

people needed emergency food aid.

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_aid/index.h\

tml?inline=nyt-classifier>

 

But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the

world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to

the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in

southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to

Zimbabwe.

 

In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply.

In October, the United Nations Children's Fund sent three tons of powdered

milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda

instead. " We will not be able to use it! " Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef's deputy

representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.

 

Farmers explain Malawi's extraordinary turnaround — one with broad

implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word:

fertilizer.

 

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends

on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to

adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer

subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their

own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa

Mutharika, Malawi's newly elected president, decided to follow what the West

practiced, not what it preached.

 

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to

reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception

from the United States and Britain. Malawi's soil, like that across

sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its

farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

 

" As long as I'm president, I don't want to be going to other capitals

begging for food, " Mr. Mutharika declared. Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil

servant in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers,

" Our people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the

water we have. "

 

The country's successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader

reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in

Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a

farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and

agricultural research.

 

Malawi, an overwhelmingly rural nation about the size of Pennsylvania, is an

extreme example of what happens when those things are missing. As its

population has grown and inherited landholdings have shrunk, impoverished

farmers have planted every inch of ground. Desperate to feed their

families, they could not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilize

it. Over time, their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell

deeper into poverty.

 

Malawi's leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but they

reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid

fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an

antipathy to government intervention.

 

In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to

eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that

Malawi's farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the

foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an

economist at the University of London.

 

In a withering evaluation of the World Bank's record on African agriculture,

the bank's own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the

removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African

countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that

improving Africa's declining soil quality was essential to lifting food

production.

 

" The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted, "

said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and

the World Bank on behalf of Malawi's fertilizer program and who has

championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and

seed for Africa's farmers.

 

Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted

by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006

and 2007, according to government crop estimates. Corn production leapt to

2.7 million metric tons in 2006 and 3.4 million in 2007 from 1.2 million in

2005, the government reported.

 

" The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic

fertilizer, full stop, " said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since

1989, when he retired as the World Bank's principal agriculturalist in

sub-Saharan Africa. " This technology has not been used in most of Africa.

The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free

or subsidize it heavily. "

 

" The government has taken the bull by the horns and done what farmers

wanted, " he said. Some economists have questioned whether Malawi's 2007

bumper harvest should be credited to good rains or subsidies, but an

independent evaluation, financed by the United States and Britain, found

that the subsidy program accounted for a large share of this year's increase

in corn production.

 

The harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing

wages for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan

State University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run

subsidy program in a sensibly managed economy " has the potential to drive

growth forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the

Malawian economy are currently caught. "

 

Farmers interviewed recently in Malawi's southern and central regions said

fertilizer had greatly improved their ability to fill their bellies with

nsima, the thick, cornmeal porridge that is Malawi's staff of life.

 

In the hamlet of Mthungu, Enelesi Chakhaza, an elderly widow whose husband

died of hunger five years ago, boasted that she got two ox-cart-loads of

corn this year from her small plot instead of half a cart.

 

Last year, roughly half the country's farming families received coupons that

entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an

acre of land, for around $15 — about a third the market price. The

government also gave them coupons for enough seed to plant less than half an

acre.

 

Malawians are still haunted by the hungry season of 2001-02. That season, an

already shrunken program to give poor farmers enough fertilizer and seed to

plant a meager quarter acre of land had been reduced again. Regional

flooding further lowered the harvest. Corn prices surged. And under the

government then in power, the country's entire grain reserve was sold as a

result of mismanagement and corruption.

 

Mrs. Chakhaza watched her husband starve to death that season. His strength

ebbed away as they tried to subsist on pumpkin leaves. He was one of many

who succumbed that year, said K. B. Kakunga, the local Agriculture Ministry

official. He recalled mothers and children begging for food at his door.

 

" I had a little something, but I could not afford to help each and every

one, " he said. " It was very pathetic, very pathetic indeed. "

 

But Mr. Kakunga brightened as he talked about the impact of the subsidies,

which he said had more than doubled corn production in his jurisdiction

since 2005.

 

" It's quite marvelous! " he exclaimed.

 

Malawi's determination to heavily subsidize fertilizer and the payoff in

increased production are beginning to change the attitudes of donors, say

economists who have studied Malawi's experience.

 

The Department for International Development in Britain contributed $8

million to the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an economist with

the agency in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced because of the $74

million subsidy was worth $120 million to $140 million.

 

" It was really a good economic investment, " he said.

 

The United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to

Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi

grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy

program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it. Over the years,

the United States Agency for International Development has focused on

promoting the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed,

and saw subsidies as undermining that effort.

 

But Alan Eastham, the American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent

interview that the subsidy program had worked " pretty well, " though it

displaced some commercial fertilizer sales.

 

" The plain fact is that Malawi got lucky last year, " he said. " They got

fertilizer out while it was needed. The lucky part was that they got the

rains. "

 

And the World Bank now sometimes supports the temporary use of subsidies

aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that fosters private markets.

 

Here in Malawi, bank officials say they generally support Malawi's policy,

though they criticize the government for not having a strategy to eventually

end the subsidies, question whether its 2007 corn production estimates are

inflated and say there is still a lot of room for improvement in how the

subsidy is carried out.

 

" The issue is, let's do a better job of it, " said David Rohrbach, a senior

agricultural economist at the bank.

 

Though the donors are sometimes ambivalent, Malawi's farmers have embraced

the subsidies. And the government moved this year to give its people a more

direct hand in their distribution.

 

Villagers in Chembe gathered one recent morning under the spreading arms of

a kachere tree to decide who most needed fertilizer coupons as the planting

season loomed. They had only enough for 19 of the village's 53 families.

 

" Ladies and gentlemen, should we start with the elderly or the orphans? "

asked Samuel Dama, a representative of the Chembe clan.

 

Men led the assembly, but women sitting on the ground at their feet called

out almost all the names of the neediest, gesturing to families rearing

children orphaned by AIDS or caring for toothless elders.

 

There were more poor families than there were coupons, so grumbling began

among those who knew they would have to watch over the coming year as their

neighbors' fertilized corn fields turned deep green.

 

Sensing the rising resentment, the village chief, Zaudeni Mapila, rose.

Barefoot and dressed in dusty jeans and a royal blue jacket, he acted out a

silly pantomime of husbands stuffing their pants with corn to sell on the

sly for money to get drunk at the beer hall. The women howled with laughter.

The tension fled.

 

He closed with a reminder he hoped would dampen any jealousy.

 

" I don't want anyone to complain, " he said. " It's not me who chose. It's

you. "

 

The women sang back to him in a chorus of acknowledgment, then dispersed to

their homes and fields.

Copyright 2007 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>

The

New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>