In a recent podcast on Freakonomics Radio called "How the supermarket helped America" the discussion was on how the supermarket changed the playing field for consumption.
I will base this info on that podcast.
I found the podcast interesting not necessarily on the topics of Russia, the cold war or production outright, but I thought it is a case study for African countries and many of the bottle-necks found there.
I found the following argumentation interesting:
Due to an overproduction of wheat and corn, it caused the US government to having to stockpile them, after giving buying guarantees. Since production became ever more efficient due to science on the one hand, such as bigger broilers and mechanization, such as tractors, on the other.
So farmers started giving excess production to cattle, pigs and chicken, where today 30% of corn and 50% of soy is used for animal feed.
Even then, production steadily continued to increase and something new was needed to use the overproduction - it was high fructose corn syrup. It was a cheap sweetener and since it was liquid easy to introduce in industrial production. This started the entire process of low cost, easy access foods.
Both trends, animal production and corn syrup are definitive American staples, and not always in a positive manner, but I think we all love BBQ :)
Production to this date hasn't continued to improve and is still increasing, so the next step has already started: Ethanol, which can be used as gas alternative, as it has been used in Brazil for some decades.
Until the mechanical tomato harvester was introduced there were 5,000 tomato farmers in the USA. 5 years later 4,400 stopped or went out of business. Between 1940 and 1969 3.4 million farmers stopped due to the introduction of science and technology. That wasn't all of course, since supermarkets started around 1930, bringing together all sorts of products and services, they wanted fewer contacts and lower product costs to lower supermarket prices. The move to standardization caused the drop from 100s of choices of apples, to just a handful with a certain red one being the most common. So those farmers who specialized and introduced technology could build their farms, but the family farms with different produce couldn't compete.
Not noted in the podcast, but this is still happening today. In the Lancaster, PA area, where the Amish are still present, the small milk farmers are having a more and more difficult time selling their milk, because it is too expensive for milk trucks to make frequent small stops instead of larger hauls and this is causing these small scale farmers to stop or move somewhere else.
The push to productivity and prices are highlighted by Wal-Mart, which didn't do something unusual by itself, but the combination of very efficient logistics and planing made it the biggest supermarket chain on the planet. To give a scale or importance of science and technology here, the most powerful supercomputer in the 80's was in the Pentagon. The 2nd most powerful was in Bentonville, Arkansas, population in 2010 of just 35,000, but headquarters to Wal-Mart.
The current generations in the West don't see the price as being the only information anymore. The move to sustainability, environment, health, fertilizer use has become a market driver with Whole Food's and other chains becoming more important and even discount supermarkets offering organic produce.
What does it tell us about Africa? It tells us, that without starting to produce surpluses of agricultural goods, other industries will not be able to flourish. Supermarkets, will still be rare and the same for lower food prices and easy access foods. This will also mean, that although urbanization is growing, the farmer population will and is not able to supply the needed goods for city dwellers, which can be seen in many countries and cities such as Lagos, Nigeria. This in turn hampers growth in all sectors.
I believe the few countries that will supply the continent are the ones doing it now and they will become economic powerhouses in the following decades, such as several North African Countries, South Africa and Nigeria I believe out of pure necessity.
With that in mind, all these Aid and funds helping these small scale farmers are causing more issues than they are solving, because productivity is not used where it has the most potential. How can it be feasible for a family to raise 50 chicken, if the feed is still imported? How can a small cattle farmer survive when imports are much cheaper when a cow even in Saudi Arabia produces of 14,000l of milk a year compared to barely 1,000?
Investments should be made in basic science and technology, not leaving out GMO's and big investors, but looking at sustainability and and environment and not only at subsidies and short terms financial gains.
I will base this info on that podcast.
I found the podcast interesting not necessarily on the topics of Russia, the cold war or production outright, but I thought it is a case study for African countries and many of the bottle-necks found there.
I found the following argumentation interesting:
Due to an overproduction of wheat and corn, it caused the US government to having to stockpile them, after giving buying guarantees. Since production became ever more efficient due to science on the one hand, such as bigger broilers and mechanization, such as tractors, on the other.
So farmers started giving excess production to cattle, pigs and chicken, where today 30% of corn and 50% of soy is used for animal feed.
Even then, production steadily continued to increase and something new was needed to use the overproduction - it was high fructose corn syrup. It was a cheap sweetener and since it was liquid easy to introduce in industrial production. This started the entire process of low cost, easy access foods.
Both trends, animal production and corn syrup are definitive American staples, and not always in a positive manner, but I think we all love BBQ :)
Production to this date hasn't continued to improve and is still increasing, so the next step has already started: Ethanol, which can be used as gas alternative, as it has been used in Brazil for some decades.
Until the mechanical tomato harvester was introduced there were 5,000 tomato farmers in the USA. 5 years later 4,400 stopped or went out of business. Between 1940 and 1969 3.4 million farmers stopped due to the introduction of science and technology. That wasn't all of course, since supermarkets started around 1930, bringing together all sorts of products and services, they wanted fewer contacts and lower product costs to lower supermarket prices. The move to standardization caused the drop from 100s of choices of apples, to just a handful with a certain red one being the most common. So those farmers who specialized and introduced technology could build their farms, but the family farms with different produce couldn't compete.
Not noted in the podcast, but this is still happening today. In the Lancaster, PA area, where the Amish are still present, the small milk farmers are having a more and more difficult time selling their milk, because it is too expensive for milk trucks to make frequent small stops instead of larger hauls and this is causing these small scale farmers to stop or move somewhere else.
The push to productivity and prices are highlighted by Wal-Mart, which didn't do something unusual by itself, but the combination of very efficient logistics and planing made it the biggest supermarket chain on the planet. To give a scale or importance of science and technology here, the most powerful supercomputer in the 80's was in the Pentagon. The 2nd most powerful was in Bentonville, Arkansas, population in 2010 of just 35,000, but headquarters to Wal-Mart.
The current generations in the West don't see the price as being the only information anymore. The move to sustainability, environment, health, fertilizer use has become a market driver with Whole Food's and other chains becoming more important and even discount supermarkets offering organic produce.
What does it tell us about Africa? It tells us, that without starting to produce surpluses of agricultural goods, other industries will not be able to flourish. Supermarkets, will still be rare and the same for lower food prices and easy access foods. This will also mean, that although urbanization is growing, the farmer population will and is not able to supply the needed goods for city dwellers, which can be seen in many countries and cities such as Lagos, Nigeria. This in turn hampers growth in all sectors.
I believe the few countries that will supply the continent are the ones doing it now and they will become economic powerhouses in the following decades, such as several North African Countries, South Africa and Nigeria I believe out of pure necessity.
With that in mind, all these Aid and funds helping these small scale farmers are causing more issues than they are solving, because productivity is not used where it has the most potential. How can it be feasible for a family to raise 50 chicken, if the feed is still imported? How can a small cattle farmer survive when imports are much cheaper when a cow even in Saudi Arabia produces of 14,000l of milk a year compared to barely 1,000?
Investments should be made in basic science and technology, not leaving out GMO's and big investors, but looking at sustainability and and environment and not only at subsidies and short terms financial gains.
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