whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1. Higher food prices mean downgrading that Turkey to a Chicken
(Analysis/Analysis)

... come out of a long period of declining food prices. The result is visibly apparent in any economic survey of agriculture. In the developed world agriculture is now only 2 – 3% of economic pro...

2. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e conservative their approach will be. The share of middle-income nations' national revenue given over to agriculture (10%) and industry (35.5%) is strikingly different from South Africa's. ...

3. Simba the Saviour?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...en spread widely across the African continent. In 1980, at the age of 30, he was appointed deputy minister of agriculture. He has also held the office of minister of Energy, as well as Minister of Yo...

4. Slaves to land, the policies of Land Affairs
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ed, or have concluded that they know better. Speaking in Wallmansthal last week at a land hand-over ceremony, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana stated that, "Upon the date of t...

5. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

...hrugged the assumption was that farms would continue producing since the minds that ran them were unimportant. Agriculture collapsed and what had once been the breadbasket of Africa is now its basket-...

6. Zimbabwe: recovering the irrecoverable
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rested them. The results have been precisely what market-economists, such as myself, have said would happen. Agriculture collapsed, the Zimbabwe Dollar is entirely debased, essential products are un...

7. The tragedy of innovation: how brilliant ideas are criminalised
(Analysis/Analysis)

...gene revolution" is being done once again under the guise of solving hunger in Africa. Chemical-intensive agriculture is, however, already known to be outmoded. We have seen how fertilisers have ...

8. The efficiency of markets and how protectionism leaves the poor behind
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ern, market-driven businesses get ever more efficient. How they are able to derive ever more from ever less. Agriculture used to be a matter of ploughing the soil, dropping in the seeds and rotating...

9. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d them at home. Europe, with their gratuitously wasteful Common Agricultural Project, does the same with their agriculture. Union representatives and social activists claim that all of these rules tha...

10. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

...and, secondly, because emerging markets frequently only have competitive advantages in primary industries like agriculture or basic manufacturing. Instead of seeing developing nations as being further...

11. What happens when they hate you? The impact of charity.
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ctly but in creating an environment in which they are encouraged to help themselves. It is no good destroying agriculture through poorly thought out land redistribution policies, and then expecting p...

12. We're from Mars and we want to help: four lessons in development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...global food corporations" are these:  i) that massive aid go into supporting small-scale subsistence agriculture; ii) that the small-scale producers themselves set their product standards; i...

13. The Tyranny of Red Lights
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ious categories of alcoholic beverages.  This law is not set by the liquor board but by the Department of Agriculture.  There doesn’t appear to be any particular reason.  And ther...

14. The end of wild seafood and the myth of "free"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...out.   There are few coastal fish left to catch from small boats, polluted water is degrading subsistence agriculture, and bad air causes illness and entrenches poverty.  The technical skill...

15. A revitalised UN may improve development in Africa
(Analysis/Analysis)

At a recent international biofuels conference1 held in Cape Town a British businessman stood up and declared, “Sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to be the middle-East of biofuels.” He

16. Lessons in sustainable development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...cultural heritage, as well as a collapsed society. The first European visitors discovered a forlorn rock where agriculture and deforestation had destroyed the environment and depleted food resources s...