LDS Aid

Two professors, one a Cornell-trained BYU professor of nutrition, have been working to improve the Atmit porridge that is often given out in LDS care packages. The hope is that it will be even better for small children with a better mix of micronutrients (particularly more iron) but without compromising on shelf-life. Another article describes its dissemination in poor areas of Peru.

A single serving provides 34 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein, 43 percent of calcium, 99 percent of iron, and high percentages for a dozen vitamins and minerals for children under 5 years old. ... 
In 2010, 645,000 pounds of Atmit were shipped by LDS Charities to four countries. Depending upon the age and size of the children, that's enough to feed 100,000 to 130,000 children for one month. The cost? Less than $6 (USD) per child.

LDS efforts to help those suffering from the famine in the Horn of Africa:

In Ethiopia, projects to aid more than 100,000 refugees are under way, including water tanks, trucking services, sanitation supplies and hygiene training for 15 villages; supplementary food for 8,700 malnourished children; nutrition centers and sanitation facilities for Somali refugees in Dollo Ado; and 5,000 hygiene kits.
The Church also plans to provide water catchment and storage structures, as well as soap and washbasins to serve tens of thousands of other residents in the communities surrounding the Dollo Ado camps.

Other projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia are also underway and briefly described at the link.



At the most recent General Conference, Church President Thomas S. Monson reminded members about the General Temple Patron Fund. Donations from members around the world are used to help members who live far from a temple travel there. A recent article highlighted some of the saints in southeastern Africa who have been blessed by the Fund:

LDS service in Latin America

In Seamay, Guatemala:

A retired civil engineer, Elder Curtiss supervised the construction of a water tank that helped bring water into the homes of the 2,000 villagers, who had never had running water in their homes [right]. In the meantime, he and his wife taught sanitation classes at the Church and helped begin construction on a new school that will soon have a library and a computer lab. While the Church paid for the water tank and facilitated construction of the school, the villagers did the labor themselves, which Elder Curtiss says helped them feel ownership of the changes occurring in their village.

In Brazil during an LDS national day of service, July 31:

More than 6,000 volunteers were mobilized to fight against dengue fever, a virus-based disease spread by mosquitoes, through a door-to-door education campaign. In Santa Catarina, near the Brazilian coast, volunteers gathered nearly 17 tons of food to be used by institutions for needy families.
Mormon Helping Hands volunteers also facilitated the donation of blood to local blood banks. Other projects included cleaning beaches, marshes, parks and public squares and the distribution of newborn kits for hospitals.

The LDS Africa day of service will be August 31, as we learned while meeting with the saints in Abuja. In Abuja they will be repairing a local school. I'm not yet sure what we in Yola will be doing because we only just got here.


I was also touched by this story of an LDS reporter who went to Tonga and found everything chaotic and not according to plan. She was advised that while there, many things would not go "right," but that she would find unexpected treasures that delight, comfort, and enable her to do what needed to be done.

As was evident in the Tonga airport, things in that island nation did not go as she expected they should. She did not have a telephone or Internet connection in her room. The building had no food services. The refrigerator across the hall started beeping at 3 a.m. — every night — and never stopped. And there were few road signs and no fast food restaurants in the country.
But — thanks to sweet direction from a faithful temple president — she found things far greater. Church members hung bananas outside her room. They helped her use a computer at the Church's administrative offices on the campus of the LDS high school. And they invited her into their homes for dinner.

Such a story sounds much more familiar than it did a few weeks ago.

Lit in Review: Impacts of thte 2010/11 Surge in Food Prices

Ivanic, Maros, Will Martin, Hasan Zaman. (2011). “Estimating the Short-Run Poverty Impacts of the 2010-11 Surge in Food Prices.” World Bank Development Research Group, Policy Research Working Paper 5633, Apr

In the 2007/08 price increase, most of the price increase was concentrated in staple cereals. This meant the effects were concentrated on the poor who had few outside options to shift to. In the current price shock, however, food prices have increased in many more commodities and by less overall. This means there are more substitutions available and much of the hit has affected foods the poor consume less of anyway. As a result, they estimate that only 44 million more people are poor instead of the 105 million more in 07/08.

However, it appears that price transmission is higher this time than last.

An International Recipe

Pork and Beef from NotCanada: Canada has been so kind as to regularly invite the neighbors over for a good old fashioned meat inspection. It saves time and transaction costs to have US inspectors give an opinion or two on Canadian meat products, many of which are subsequently sold south. Normally the inspectors find some problems at a few individual plants and make some friendly recommendations. This time around, the problems they found were far more systematic, the government had failed to follow up on problems noted in the last inspection, the government had also failed to follow its own manuals at plant level, and 6 of Maple Leaf's plants (Canada's largest meatpacker) were either banned from shipping to the US or served notice that they would be banned if they didn't clean up at once.

Quinoa from Bolivia: Once pushed aside by Spaniards in favor of wheat,quinoa's rising popularity among foodies has increased its price seven fold since 2000 even as production increased tenfold. The increasing price, however, has led farmers to export the vast majority of their crop and instead eat rice and beans, lowering the families' nutritional wellbeing. Bolivia and Peru produce 97% of the world's quinoa. Farmers say it is not lifting them out of poverty, but they are living better.

President Evo Morales' government has deemed quinoa a "strategic" foodstuff, essential to this poverty-afflicted nation's food security. It is promoting the grain and has included quinoa in a subsidized food parcel for pregnant women....

Quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) provides 10 essential amino acids, is loaded with minerals and has a high protein content — between 14 and 18 percent. The FAO (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) says it is so nutritious it can be substituted for mother's milk.

"This food is about the most perfect you can find for human diets," said Duane Johnson, a 61-year-old former Colorado State agronomist who helped introduce it to the United States three decades ago.

Quinoa isn't a cereal. It's a seed that is eaten like a grain, but is gluten-free and more easily digestible than corn, wheat, rye, millet and sorghum. And it can be substituted for rice in just about anything — from soup to salad to pudding to bread.

Onions from India: A delightful article on the political economy of very particular foods and the importance of keeping the urban middle-class happy, rather than farmers.

You might find it hard to believe, but high prices of onions can trigger the fall of the government in India. In 1998, a supply side shock led to a sharp increase in onion prices in the country and most notably, in the state of Delhi. In the following elections, the ruling party was routed in large part due to its failure to control the price of onions in the capital state. Today, onion prices in India are up again, rising by over 100% in just three weeks in December [and the government has responded in short order.]

Commenters complain, however, that onions are in fact a staple and affect the welfare of the poor greatly. (Eg.: "For many poor people in the villages Onion is the only item eaten with bread.")

Beans from Malawi?: Scientists are arguing that the Malawi government should encourage farmers to plant beans (pigeon pea, actually) with their maize to reduce the cost of Malawi's fertilizer subsidies. Pigeon pea fertilizes the ground so fertilizer costs are cut in half, improves the productivity of the synethetic fertilizers that are used, and stabilize and increase production. Currently the talk is of complementing fertilizer rather than removing them.

Another big bag of development

 Haddad argues that agricultural development could help spur and push Ethiopia's high growth rates into the future, but only if done right. He recommends growth-diagnostic-like tools to identify where the bottlenecks are by agroecological zone. Different reports come to different conclusions about the extent to which government money is spent for political purposes rather than development. Government officials appeared to be knowledgeable about the problems of fast growth and to be asking good questions.

Aid Thoughts is concerned about DfiD's new plan to democratize aid by letting people vote on where the money goes. He argues that "This kind of approach will just increase the skew of development financing away from the economy and towards social development, and reduce the use of General Budget Support, the option that most respects the idea of country ownership of the development process. Still, it’s a consultation, so whether you agree with me or not, let them know."

Tales from the Hood ends its series pondering what we've learned about development in Haiti this year by proposing what it has taught about the kind of transparency initiatives that need to happen: "We’ve let our ordinary citizen supporters believe that we can and will solve any problem – from rubble-removal to general world poverty. But one year later, it is painfully obvious in Haiti at least that we can’t. And they’re mad." Being more honest about the difficulty of aid has long been one of their regular themes.

Lots more below the fold.

LDS around the world

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons) had a brief, government-authorized presence in Burundi before civil strife broke out in 1992. Last August the first officially recognized church unit in Burundi held meetings again. The article tells the story of the Malabi family, their sacrifices, and the regrowth of the Church in Burundi. It mentions how a group of hundreds of people who wanted to join the Church had formed an informal church group and when they found Bro. Malabi asked him to visit them and teach them more.

Brother Malabi made the long trip to Uvira to teach them two or three times a month. This continued for five years. He traveled at his own expense, usually alone but sometimes accompanied by his wife or one of his children. When asked how much he paid for each trip, he responded, "$10". That travel expense of $30 per month was 5 percent of his total monthly income of $600.

I thought I had blogged about this earlier, but I can't find it now:  LDS Apostles Holland and Christofferson visited a number of African countries last month, pronouncing blessings on Burundi and Angola."Elder Holland expressed his feeling that Africa had been held in reserve by the Lord in the spirit of "the last shall be first" and that Africa would someday be seen as a bright land full of gospel hope and happiness." Both blessed "government leaders as they seek to serve the people and prayed that persons of ability and integrity would be drawn to public service." Picture shows members in Zimbabwe.

Proselyting missionaries save up to help pay for their endeavors. A recent article showcased what a young man in the Democratic Republic of Congo does to save for his mission:

Each day, Sedrick pushes his bicycle, laden with 200 pounds of bananas, for two hours to get to the market. He sells the bananas for the best price he can, then rides back for another load. He does this several times a week. Sedrick has been doing this backbreaking work for four years.

Sedrick told me that he makes about $3 a trip. From that he must buy his food, repair his bicycle and save for his mission. His savings will only pay for the high cost of getting a passport in the DR Congo. Member contributions to the General Missionary Fund will pay the rest.

Putnam and Campbell's study of religion in America shows that "Religious Americans are more likely than others to act in a variety of ways that benefit society, and they tend to be more actively engaged in the surrounding social sphere as well."

The Kosovo ambassador to the US was a refugee ten years ago during the ethnic cleansing. This week during a trip to speak at Utah Valley University he visited Church headquarters and LDS Humanitarian Services to thank the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their humanitarian involvement during that time.

Church service missionaries (different from proselytizing missionaries) rebuilt schools in Peru following the 2007 8.0 earthquake.

The Church provided the rebuilding resources then contracted with local construction companies to build the classrooms. Church engineers, added Brother Ramirez, oversaw every aspect of the school building, from the foundation to the roof and right down "to the amount of mixture in the cement." ...

Gil Villa is the mother of a child attending the Chincha school. She has noticed a difference in the students and her fellow parents since the rebuilt classrooms were opened last year. The children, she said, take ownership of their school. They are quick to report vandalism and other abuses. And the parents are doing their part to help.

"Every week parents come to clean the school," said Mrs. Villa. "We come every Friday to polish and wax the floors. We clean everything so on Monday, when the children return, they find a clean school."

 And a brief mention of last week's flooding in Venezuela and LDS relief efforts there, and cholera relief efforts in Papua New Guinea and Haiti. The Church also established its first stake [multiple congregation unit] in Guam for the 2,000 LDS living there.

Food prices and inflation

A couple weeks ago, Armstrong at the Mises Institute put out a tirade against "Helicopter Ben running his printing presses at full speed" causing 0.4% inflation. He then explained that people were not more concerned about this terrible inflation rate because "core" inflation -- everything but food and fuel -- had only gone up 0.1%. That's less than 2% a year, hardly massive inflation. Food and fuel had gone up by a little more than 0.5%.

Armstrong then made a point that was simultaneously off-base and insightful in another context. First, the off-base part. Inflation is not changes in relative prices. When the price of one group of commodities (like food) goes up relative to other prices, that isn't inflation. When the rise in food prices leads to a rise in wage prices and a rise in the price of everything, that is inflation, but it's still a one-time event. It's not ongoing, monetary inflation of the sort that would be caused by the Fed. If I have a pain in my chest, it could be a heart attack or it could be that someone punched me and as a doctor you have to look at the other symptoms to know which is the case. This is not inflation caused by the monetary authority.

The other point is exceptionally well made, however. Where people spend large amount of their income on food -- particularly poor people -- the rise in food and fuel prices matter a lot more to their well-being than core inflation. When food prices spiked in 07/08, what mattered for the world's poor was the rapid erosion of their purchasing power. The current, small spikes are not caused by Bernanke, but by Russian wildfires and predicted low US maize harvests. FAO is rather concerned about it.

The reason we separate inflation into food, fuel, and "core" is so we can look at the part that matters. If you're trying to judge whether Fed policy is excessively loose, core inflation is what you ought to look at and it says that inflation is below what the Fed is unofficially targeting. If you want to identify changes in welfare for the "average" person, you need to look at the total picture including food and fuel. For different income groups, you really ought to look at different commodity baskets that include the other resources available to the group. If the price of organic, farmers' market foods goes up, well-to-do Ithacans may spend less on food in total by buying more from WalMart (while wearing a bag over their heads... can't let my neighbors find out.) When the prices of food at WalMart go up, the less well off have few other alternatives.

This, incidentally, is one of the reasons that it is important to continue investments to help small farmers become more productive, as discussed by this year's World Food Prize winner Beckmann and Aid Thoughts' Dissanayake. A paper reassessing our success in raising smallholder, Sub-Saharan Africa agricultural productivity is here, recent FAO efforts are highlighted in Nicaragua and in Pakistan, India is considering replacing coconut harvesters with machines, and a discussion of Malawi beekeeping all make interesting case studies of the efforts underway.

Big Bag ... too big

Adam Smith is quoted by Thought du Jour on inequality

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter 8, paragraph 35.

I don't think this has that much to do with inequality ("fair share" or "equal share") per se as it is about poverty. You could say it's about a living wage, but the ability of working people to meet their needs "tolerably well" hardly says anything about preventing the wealthy from buying multiple McMansions.

A different view of trade vs. aid: which one do you want as your friend?

Mr Meles’s contempt for what he calls the “neoliberalism” of the West is as plain as his admiration for “generous” and “dependable” China. ... The Europeans and Americans find this galling, since they continue to pay for many of Ethiopia’s hospitals and schools, as well as handing out free food. But trade between Ethiopia and China is increasingly what matters. It was worth $800m in the first six months of this year, up by 27% on last year. China has invested $2.5 billion in Ethiopia, mostly in infrastructure.

Easterly's logic test (a test that has offended a surprising number of commenters)

2. Some nut somewhere is a fan of the economist Friedrich Hayek. Therefore it follows that: (a) since I like Hayek, I am a nut, (b) you can logically prove that Hayek  is a talk show host (c) Hayek’s ideas make possible a free society in which nuts say nutty things, but you can ignore them.

Speaking of whom, the IMF is starting to sound remarkably Austrian:

The seeds of the crisis were sown, in large part, in the five years before the crisis. Between 2003 and 2008, much of the region experienced a boom in bank credit, asset prices, and domestic demand. ... while the influx of capital boosted growth, it also led to rising imbalances and vulnerabilities.... Boom-bust credit cycles can be very costly, so it is essential to prevent credit booms from getting out of hand.

They have yet to adopt Austrian solutions, however.

In an increasingly rare moment of solidarity, the New York Senate and Assembly unanimously passed an autism insurance bill. I am uncertain of the details, but the press blurb is that it should "require coverage of evidence-based treatments like speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and applied behavior analysis. S7000B also insures that coverage for behavioral therapy cannot be denied because it is deemed educational or habilitative in nature." Gov. Paterson became the second governor after Mark Sanford to veto such legislation. Sanford was overridden. There's some good money on the second and soon to be former governor being overridden as well.

On the difficulty of trying to please everybody, or the problem with being a pragmatist, or The Obama Paradox.

Cato (via Newmark) on the impacts of McCain-Feingold:

Kenneth Vogel offers an unexpected insight into the nature of campaign finance regulation:

“[Wisconsin Senator Russell] Feingold faces an uphill battle against a novice opponent, who, perhaps ironically, has been the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads attacking Feingold that would have been prohibited had McCain-Feingold remained intact.”

In other words, if Feingold’s campaign finance law had not proven to be contrary to the U.S. Constitution, he might well not be facing “an uphill battle” to serve a fourth term in Washington. The political speech that is causing Feingold problems would have been prohibited in that situation.

"Satellite dishes amid the tin-roofed shacks of El Salvador. So much for Maslow's hierarchy."


Courtesy Mankiw, Hennessey fights Goolsebee's statistics with other statistics. It makes me want to see Iron Chef Statistician: Whose descriptive methodologies will reign supreme? Video below the fold:

The Lighter Side: Regime Change (1963 edition)

From when the CIA accidentally overthrew the government of Costa Rica in 1963. Oh, those fun 1960s days! (below the fold)

A last flurry of blog links

If you wonder why there are so many links posts lately, it's because I was up all night and I find reading a less error-prone way of spending my impaired cognitive function than writing.

Beckworth argues that Keynes' "paradox of thrift" is really only an excess demand for money. There are three ways for people to save more - reduce spending and hoard cash; spend more on investments; reduce debt. That second option is directly productive and does not lead to a paradox, and the third is a transfer of resources to creditors who do not produce a paradox of thrift unless they hoard the cash. If people want to hold on to cash, this shows up as a decrease in the velocity of money. Increasing the money supply allows people to hold more cash while maintaining their spending."Another way of saying this, is that the paradox of thrift requires the Fed to be asleep on the job."

This links to a news article about a scientific paper. This sentence wittily demonstrates my approval of said satire and sparks the reader's interest in clicking. This sentence could have been deleted if I had edited more carefully, but I thought it was cute at the time.

LDS in Peru: the President expresses warm feelings

"President Garcia told us that when he was about 10-years-old his grandmother and an aunt joined the Mormon Church," said Elder Christofferson [Mormon apostle]. "His grandmother took him to meetings from time to time and he remembered, as a boy, helping with the construction of our first chapel in Lima, carrying bricks and things like that."
The Peruvian president also expressed thanks for the humanitarian work the Church has performed in his nation, including a recent project to help scores of members rebuild their homes following a massive earthquake in 2007. "He recognized the quality of citizens that the members of the Church make and said that we could count on him for any need that we might have in the country."

 Did you know that Brazil is the world's largest exporter of orange juice (85% of all traded orange juice comes from Brazil), sugar (45%), coffee (30%), beef (20%), and among the top 5 exporters of soybeans (40%), corn/maize (10%), pork (10%), and cotton (10%)?


On the lack of morphine in Africa.

Venezuela: good news and bad

Inequality is down, says Duncan Green via. Roving Bandit. In a Latin American context, that is a very difficult feat and undoubtedly a good thing ... right?

Well, it all depends on whether we're talking about the poor getting richer or the rich getting poorer: A new study shows that "voters who were identified as Chávez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.3 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released."

If those opponents are richer than average, that will reduce inequality without accomplishing much of anything good. If they are poorer than average, then inequality has gotten smaller despite one factor working against it.

I hate it when I doubt undoubtedly good things.

Eating Remarkable Food: Other White Meats

Back when I’d been at this international aid thing for not very long, I made a promise to myself that food was never going to be an issue for me. Annoyed with fellow expats for whom food seemed justification for going high-maintenance, I resolved to try anything at least once. And always accept whatever a host offered. “It’ll all just turn to glucose later”, I told myself. And to this day, that has been my personal motto, while traveling, where food is concerned.

 Thus begins a fascinating tour of food duty, including:

Dog: The other white meat. Tastes a little like chicken. In fact, quite contrary to the ethnocentric assumptions of some, I’ve heard of Western people going to dog restaurants and being tricked into eating chicken disguised as dog (chicken is much cheaper), rather than the other way around.

Other tales of micro-livestock: in Bolivia, in Mexico,  in DRC.

Some Thoughts from The Economist

Between 30k and 75k tons of food were stolen or wasted in Venezuela as Chavez aims to make Venezuela more food self-sufficient while simultaneously attacking the private enterprises - farmers and retailers - who make the system work. Food price inflation is up 21% in the first five months of the year, goods are becoming scarcer, food imports are up as productivity is declining, and nationalized businesses are suffering heavily.

Scientists are combining DNA from the Belgian blue cow (extra muscle, low fat) into trout to make them either much meatier with low fat or grow to marketable size at double speed. After ten years' petitioning, the FDA has finally given a clue how they will regulate the new transgenic fish, which The Economist unhelpfully labels Frankenfish.

11% of Kenya's GDP is transferred annually over cell phones. This is made possible by networks of agents that exchange currency for e-float and who then head to the bank as needed to exchange them and restore their balances.

Britain is looking to reduce aid to China and Russia while increasing flows to poorer countries. Mitchell, the new aid minister, is also looking to take on the "cash on delivery" model from the Centre for Global Development.

Buttonwood channels Hayek in explaining the 1997 Asian financial crisis to argue that "Without the boom, there would have been no need for a bust." "If governments keep punishing short-sellers during busts ... there will be fewer shorts around to temper the next boom."

And a fascinating comment from Charlemagne who compares Belgian politics to EU politics. In both cases there is a serious North/South split in attitudes about fiscal restraint and wealth transfer policies. But "this is not just a fight about money... For voters to consent to transfers of wealth, they must feel that the recipients are democratically accountable to them. ... Germany's focus on discipline is arguably an attempt to fix a democratic deficit." Intriguing.

All from last week's copy, subscription required.

Successes: Nutrition in Bolivia, LDS

The April Ensign reports on LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons) development assistance efforts in Bolivia. From the description in the article, the church is following a lot of best practices.

"Project leaders worked closely with local government and community leaders to decide together what needs the Church could meet and to involve the community more heavily in the projects. ... Since the funding for the programs lasts only for a limited time, the Church involved local ... leaders, physicians, health officials, and residents in hopes that the results would last."

Local leaders in El Alto identified four primary needs two years ago: remodel the hospital, train people in gardening and nutrition, train doctors in neonatal resuscitation and provide supplies for it, and wheelchairs. So the Church arranged for training of another 150 midwives in neonatal resuscitation, provided supplies for the hospital and thousands of wheelchairs, used churches for nutrition training meetings, and taught urban dwellers about square foot gardening and provided some start up seeds. Initial recipients then spread the knowledge and some seeds to neighbors who have spread the information yet further. They are also teaching urban gardening in La Paz and raising micro-livestock.

Community leaders in Suriquiña wanted to reduce malnutrition from 50 percent of children to 10 percent. At Church buildings, members of the community were taught how to build adobe block greenhouses with a goal to have each participating household set up two greenhouses: one for own consumption and one for products to sell. Now, "for the first time, [they] started growing and eating cucumbers, lettuce, beets and other healthful plants." By next year, there should be about 100 greenhouses up and some children are already showing marked improvement.

"One of our goals is to help people set their own course and solve their own problems. We're confident that with a little bit of help where needed and inspiration from the Lord, they can and will improve conditions for their families."

The Benson Institute was heavily involved in the efforts. They commented that, "The majority of the people eat only meat products and potatoes, and they really don't have any other types of foods such as vegetables, which are needed for them to receive vitamins." So they have also been teaching residents how to eat prepare and eat vegetables safely.

Residents in and out of the church are commenting on their children's improved health and abilities at school.

Additional information on the communities and efforts can be found here. Other LDS efforts worldwide include a new, free employment website with over 250,000 job listings at the moment and reports of LDS efforts and perspective in Haiti can be found here and here.

Good News, Except for the Bad News

The IMF put up a couple posts this week with very similar themes: the global economy is doing better than expected ... except where it isn't; banks are doing better than expected ... except where they aren't. Global growth projections are up, but OECD country growth is more tepid than expected and far too slow to get us back up to trend. Bank write offs are smaller than originally anticipated, but there's plenty of blood still in the water so that "we run the very real risk of undermining the recovery and extending the financial crisis into a new phase." The handy phrase for things not going as desired everywhere is that there are "pockets." Deep pockets, but the wrong kind. The Poverty News Blog tells us more:

One of the "pockets" is Fiji where poverty has increased 10% to 45% despite increased anti-poverty spending. The government hopes to drop kick that 15 percent in the next ten years. A rather more ambitious national goal than the MDG it will have missed.

One of the "pockets" is Haiti, to no one's surprise. "May 1 marks the start of Haiti’s rainy season, which threatens to unleash a torrent of mudslides and flash floods on the Valley’s makeshift communities. The UN has determined that 9,000 of Bourdon Valley’s residents are at immediate risk of losing their lives in this area due to dangers posed by the rains." NGOs and UN programs are constructing new makeshift facilities with santitation, but many people aren't willing to leave for the next settlement. They're building the foundations for homes and restarting businesses.

And, demonstrating that "pockets" is a highly relative term, the Washington Post is concerned that Colombia has reduced poverty more slowly than its neighbors: 8 percentage points over 6 years (down to 43%) compared to almost 20 percentage point drop in Peru. Inequality has increased in Colombia.

Successes: Uruguay Dairy

IPS reports: Uruguay "cruderos" sell fresh, unprocessed milk ("leche crudo" --> "crudero") at the city limits. The problem is they are far too small to make it worth processing and too far from a processor. The city government of Durazno teamed up with a private milk processor, Nutri'sima, to open a plant closer to the cruderos in 2008. The government provided additional training and some capital equipment to the farmers. The plant then buys their milk, processes it, and sells it on to supermarkets, gaining the dairymen access to more markets, lifting them out of the informal sector, and improving food quality. They hope to get the farmers access to freezers also so they can bring the milk in every other day instead of daily to decreasing transportation costs. If my unreliable Spanish is right, this is the plant in question:

Claudia Jeannette Pérez, president of the association of former "cruderos" from the areas surrounding the city of Durazno, explained that they used to sell raw milk, artisanal cheeses, eggs and vegetables "door to door, in shops and in the local open air markets."

Today, all that has changed.

They no longer live below the poverty line, and there are now proper hygiene conditions on their small farms, which must live up to certain standards in order to sell their milk to the pasteurisation plant.

Furthermore, they now have access to running water - essential to maintaining production levels and standards - and many also have electricity.

And while they continue to live in the impoverished outskirts of cities and towns, "now we feel respected; we feel like we are part of society," said another small dairy farmer.

The one thing the article doesn't mention is how the poor on the outskirts of the city are getting their milk now that the cruderos aren't riding through every morning to sell cheaper milk.

Hat tip: Poverty News

Upcoming Kid on the Block: Chile

This week, Chile was extended an invitation to join the OECD. Now, there's a long process involved in accepting the invitation, and that acceptation being accepted again and so forth. But, as Perry Como enthusiasts might sing, Chile has come a long way from Pinochet.(Hat tip MR)

Banana Wars: The Final Chapter (?)

The BBC reports:

The European Union has agreed a deal to cut tariffs on banana imports, signalling the end of the world's longest-running trade dispute. ...
The price of bananas could fall by 12% as a result. The formal agreement will be signed in six to nine months' time.
Duty on imported bananas will be cut from 176 euros (£158; $256) per tonne to an initial 148 euros (£133; $215). Further cuts will be made on an annual basis over the next seven years to 114 euros per tonne. ...
The move is likely to disadvantage the banana industries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (known as the ACP countries), who do not pay tariffs on imports to the EU. ...

Errol Emmanuel, acting manager of Dominica Banana Growers Limited, told the BBC World Service the agreement would hit poor farmers in the Windward Islands hardest: "These small farms are family owned. You have husband and wife and maybe one or two helpers... they don't have the resources to compete with the Doles and the Del Montes, who own vast tracts of land."
A compensation package for Dominica and the other ACP countries, worth 200m euros, is included in the deal.

Successes in Ag Development

IFPRI has a new publication out entitled Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Agricultural Development, available for free download. It includes 20 chapters, "each one based on a synthesis of peer-reviewed literature, along with other relevant knowledge, that documents an intervention’s impact on hunger and malnutrition and the pathways to food security. Each study brings the evidence together, examines the rigor with which the evidence was generated, and assesses the pros and cons of each success." The book itself has also been peer reviewed.

The successes it lists include (by subject)

Increased production:
The Green Revolution in Asia
Improved maize in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Rice production in Bangladesh
Hybrid rice production in China
Pearl millet and sorghum in India
Mungbean in Asia
Smallholder dairy in India (also change in institutions)
Aquaculture for smallholders - Tilapia in the Philippines
Homestead food production in Bangladesh to diversify diets (micronutrient deficiencies)

Environmental sustainability:
Community Forestry in Nepal
Re-Greening the Sahel: farmer-led innovation in Burkina Faso and Niger
Zero-tillage soybeans in Argentina
Zero-tillage rice-wheat in the Indo-Gangetic Plains

Institutional reforms:
Cotton reforms in Burkina Faso (gradual liberalization)
Unlocking the market: Fertilizer and maize in Kenya (market liberalization)
Land-tenure reform in China and in Vietnam (2 chapters)

Reduced pests:
International collaboration to contain wheat rusts
Pest resistant cassava in Africa
Eridcating rinderpest (Cattle)

Lit in Review: Easterly on Growth

Just clearing out my paper files and extending my memory.

Easterly and Rebelo, 1993 J Monet Ec "Fiscal policy and economic growth: An empirical investigation"
Type: Descriptive, Cross-section (change in 1970-1988) and panel (1870-1988). Lots of bivariate regressions, some multi.
Findings: Very poor and small countries rely heavily on int'l trade taxes while income taxes are important in developed (>$2500 GDP/cap) and large countries; the share of investment in transport and communication and the budget surplus are correlated with growth, but little else is; taxation results are fragile and difficult; government revenue increases with income (Wagner's Law), mostly on health and social security. No significant differences between democracies and non-democracies.

Easterly and Levine, 1997 QJE "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions
Type: Cross-country (1960s, 1970s, 1980s), SURE, country random effects. [Picture of official languages in Africa]
Findings: 40% of the difference between Africa and East Asia is explained by: low schooling, instability, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, high deficits, and insufficient infrastructure. Ethnolinguistic diversity (the probability that two randomly selected people belong to different e.l. groups) is linked with black market premiums, poor financial development, infrastructure, and education. They use other measures of ethnic diversity also, and find much the same thing. Even after accounting for diversity's effects on these variables, diversity still explains 28% of the growth difference (Afr/EAsia). In bivariate, going fdrom complete homogeneity to complete heterogeneity reduces growth 2.3 percentage points. If Nigeria had only the average level of diversity, it would have doubled its growth.
Examples: 40 different groups in Kenya, with ~90% of the vote going to your tribe's candidate(s). Ghana conflict over cocoa tax rates and overvaluing the exchange rates.
Botswana has one of the most homoegenous societies and highest growth rates, also overcoming resource curse.
Literature recommendations: Pakenham (1991) for a popular history of how Africa's ethnic groups were split and lumped into countries by the European powers.
Best Table: 3: Ethnoliguistic Fractionalization Index, 15 most fractionalized countries in 1960: Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire (DRC), Cameroon, India, S. Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Central Afr Rep, Kenya, Liberia, Zambia, Angola, Mali, Sierra Leone all have a greater than 75% chance that two randomly selected people are not from the same ethnic group.

Easterly, 2007 J Dev Econ, Inequality does cause underdevelopment: Insights from a new instrument
Type: IV, Cross-country
Discussion: An important differentiation is made between strucutral inequality (S. America) and market inequality (China). Market inequality may be good for growth or bad, but structural is bad. He instruments for structural inequality using the percent of land suitable for wheat farming (low returns to scale, favors family farms and equal land distribution) vs. sugar farming (high returns to scale, favors plantations with high inequality). Land suitability for rainfed sugarcane pictures on the right. Structural inequality then causes bad institutions - which he is unable to identify beyond 'bad for democracy' - that reduce growth and mobility. There are about 50 ways the chain of assumptions could go wrong, but it adds to the emerging consensus that strucutral inequality is bad for growth.
Findings: Take a wild guess. Yes, everything is significant except the link to specific institutions.