Interesting and disturbing food and agriculture news

First, this thoughtful number from Senegal, on the see-saw of global price prices.

Second, a mysterious plague of worms riddles Liberia. There is still no certainty on what they are and many upcountry farmers feel frightened and abandoned - but even though the spray teams from the Ministry of Agriculture come late, at least there are spray teams.

Third, another story on middle income countries buying food through barter deals. This time last year, it was because food was too expensive. This year, food is cheap, but they can't get credit to pay for it.

Liberian cassava farmers profiled on the BBC

I love this stuff . . . and there isn't a single man to be seen, except for a motorcycle taxi driver in slide 8.

In fact, in three months spent in Liberia, I never saw a man farming cassava. Rubber, yes and sometimes rice, but cassava farming is "women's work". Notice how the men in the picture below are 'supervising' (i.e., sitting around) while the women are busy.

Sometimes I imagine that the gender division of employment in agriculture will change as countries become more developed. But maybe not. I have been walking around rural Yorkshire in the last week, where there are a lot of sheep farms. Without exception, the farmers riding around the hills in Land Rovers and quad bikes are men. Maybe men only get involved when there are machines to play with?

Emily is back in Liberia

The excellent Emily Stanger has gone to work for the Ministry of Gender in Liberia. Emily, please make sure you post regularly - your fans around the world will appreciate it!

Emily is working as a Scott Fellow (with support from the Nike Foundation), part of a scheme to bring young professionals (many of them Liberian) to work in the government there for a year, sometimes more. This seems to me is the right kind of technical assistance - not just a few months of consulting (something I have done in the past, but I have decided to steer clear of for a while!), but serious engagement, for a serious period of time. I wish her and the other Scott Fellows the best of luck.

What's in a national motto?

To the best of my knowledge, only Brazil and Saudi Arabia have a national motto (or whatever you want to call it) on their national flag. Many more have a motto on their official coat of arms, though and from there, it frequently gets onto passports, official documents and the currency.

So how does the motto get chosen? And what does that choice say about a country?

I suppose most mottos are chosen at independence, so the leaders of the nationalist or revolutionary movements are probably important. But can we learn about a country's history from a motto? Or, especially in Africa, the personality of its first President or 'founding father'?

Compare these two, for example:
"Unité-discipline-travail" (unity-discipline-work)
"Unité-progres-justice" (unity-progress-justice)

The first is Côte d'Ivoire: serious, conservative, in keeping with President Houphoët's non-revolutionary ideology. The second is its neighbour Burkina Faso: superficially similar (and following France's lead by doing things in threes) but more progressive-sounding, more socialist maybe, with a revolutionary tinge. Coincidence?

I don't think so. When Burkina Faso was Upper Volta, its motto was actually "Unité-discipline-justice". When Thomas Sankara renamed it 'The Land of Upright People' in 1984, he changed the flag, national anthem and motto as well. Out with discipline, in with progress. A subtle change, but a symbolic one.


Or how about these two in East Africa? Kenya has 'Harambee' ('Together') while Tanzania has 'Uhuru na umoja' (Freedom and unity'). Almost identical, you might think. But 'Harambee' wasn't just a slogan for Jomo Kenyatta, it became a defining ideology for Kenya: nationalism, economic development and the uniquely Kenyan institution of the 'harambee meeting', community fundraising events in which local dignitaries donate to worthy causes and politicians (pardon my cynicism) return some of the cash they have looted to the people. Meanwhile, Tanzania - then as now a lopsided federation - stresses unity. The word 'Uhuru' is important too: Tanzania's president Julius Nyerere published two collections of speeches with 'Uhuru' in the title ('Freedom and Socialism' and 'Freedom and Development')

As to why Kenya has lions on its coat of arms and Tanzania has a man and a woman, I am afraid to speculate, but the symbolic contrast is striking.

Some slogans are unintentionally ironic. Liberia's fine emblem (left) fails to mention is that only 2% or so of its population where brought there by "the love of liberty". The rest of them were probably as bewildered by the beautiful ship with the white sails as I would be if a bunch of white Baptist Americans showed up in northern England and announced they had come to settle there.

How about the choice of language? Do you choose a colonial language, or do you pick a local one (and thereby risk offending minority ethnic groups?). Most countries in West Africa seem to go with English or French, whereas Swahili rules in East Africa, maybe because it's a regional rather than a local language so there's less chance of offending someone. The British and the Dutch royal families both have French mottos, but nobody seems to care.

Sometimes national mottos resonate in unintended ways. Mali's motto is a super-idealistic "Un peuple, un but, une foi" ("One people, one goal, one faith"). At first I thought it sounded like a song by U2. Then I remembered where I had come across 'one people' before. The motto of Hitler's Germany was "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer". Thankfully, a motto does not always a people make.

"Aid is good, business is better"

Last week's International Herald Tribune carried an article by two most unusual co-authors: the world's largest diamond miner and Africa's first woman president.

President Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and Nicky Oppenheimer of De Beers write: "Countries must be willing to make a change in mind-set from the idea that foreign programs and plans will lift countries out of poverty to a belief in their own vision for their future. Foreign aid should only temporarily support countries while they implement difficult reforms and get on their feet."

Fantastic. I wonder how long 'temporary' means, though? Ghana has had billions pumped into it over 50 years and there is no sign of it stopping anytime soon. In fact, Ghana is getting more aid than ever - partly because its government has the capacity to spend it. Even more deservedly, Liberia is (at last) getting the huge inflows it will need to build up its infrastructure and public services. Not much of it is channeled through the government yet, but that is beginning to change.

In the longer term, though, I wonder if it might be wise to plan ahead for when the aid money will stop? Cutting off aid from one year to the next is hugely damaging, but pretending that it will continue for ever is a recipe for continued stagnation and dependency. I'd favour a negotiated drawdown - somewhere between Obama's 2 years and McCain's 100 years.

Some countries will need help for longer than others. Post-war countries are a special case and so are small islands or landlocked countries without natural resources. But I'd argue the chances of, say, Kenya or Ghana becoming middle-income countries by 2020 would actually be enhanced if we could agree a plan for aid drawdown now. (It has been done: look at Botswana, South Korea, Taiwan, Mauritius, even India is now a net donor).

So, Madam President, will you be brave enough to announce the date when Liberia will be independent from aid?

Doha and Firestone

Two pieces caught my eye yesterday:

First, my old Professor Dani Rodrik's offers a characteristically acerbic critique of the Doha Round. A waste of time, he says; most of the benefits would go to rich country taxpayers. And why is it published in an English-language Egyptian newspaper? Maybe Egyptian cotton farmers were hoping to benefit from Doha?

Second, the Firestone Company has signed an agreement with workers in Liberia. For the first time in the 82-year history of the world's rubber plantation, the company has done a deal with elected workers' representatives. (The ILRF has a self-congratulatory press release, but I would give more credit to the workers' union, Liberian government and media for keeping up the pressure). I wouldn't expect the miserable working conditions in the plantation to change immediately, but higher wages, more schools and buses to take tappers to work and their children to school are certainly steps in the right direction. As ever, the difficulty will be in implementing the deal: after all, workers are already supposed to be limited to an 8-hour working day when in fact it takes more like 12 hours to reach the daily quota (see picture).

At first glance, these two items are entirely unrelated. But I began to wonder why we never hear about rubber in the global trade talks? Or, for that matter, cocoa, coffee or oil palm?

Probably because none of the commodities above are grown in the USA or Europe. The most egregious trade restrictions, the ones that protect a few rich-country farmers at the expense of millions of Africans, are in cotton and sugar. Even Rodrik agrees that farmers in West Africa would benefit from a more liberal trade regime in cotton - but the US blocks it because of a few thousand swing voters in Florida. Meanwhile, in Europe we still make sugar out of beet. Maybe we're afraid that pirates will cut off our supplies of cane from the Caribbean.

I certainly hope that global trade negotiators will find a way to salvage some useful parts from the wreckage of Doha. But let's not pretend that selling a bit more cotton or sugar will end poverty in Benin or Burkina Faso. Low productivity means poverty, whether your crop is freely traded or not.

Colleagues' blogs in Liberia

While visiting Liberia last week, I was lucky enough to stay with three blogging colleagues: Laura Bacon, Diane Mak and Preya Sharma.

All three are working in various government departments and doing their best to understand and contribute, in some small way, to this small but important country.

Most people seem to be keen on the work they are doing or that we did last year; but of course it's not entirely costless and our impact is highly variable (my biggest impact seems to have been not my main project, but IT skills training I did in my spare time!). So I am wondering: what, if anything, have other governments got out of short-term technical assistance and internships? Are there any lessons that would be useful for Liberia? What can be done to bring in people from the diaspora, who can usually get up to speed quicker than well-meaning foreigners?

Liberia: the process is on

Every time I visit Liberia, there are a few new buildings going up, a few more roads resurfaced, more private cars on the roads (and fewer UN LandCruisers, it seems) and another airline that has just started flights to Robertsfield.

It's slow progress, but it's progress. The atmosphere in Monrovia still feels tense, thanks to rising food and gas prices and continued problems with violent crime; but Liberia has so far been spared the 'rice riots' that have rocked Côte d'Ivoire this year or Liberia itself in 1979. Indeed, my former boss Minister Toe was instrumental in getting the World Bank to cough up $10m in response, including $3m to increase domestic food production.

Most positive accounts of Liberia begin with the government and that is my usual starting point too - but on this trip I tried hard to look for signs of life in the private sector.
On a road trip to Bong County, the graded roads and repainted schools are obvious - but also building materials stores sprouting everywhere. For now, this is mostly a reconstruction boom; but the service sector is growing too. More and better snacks available at the side of the road; more and better telephone, internet and printing services (though there are still no landlines); and best of all, insurance.

Why am I excited about insurance? I'm not, really: I have never worked in insurance and I hope I never have to. But my friend James, an old colleague at the Ministry of Agriculture, had just left his job to become a manager for an insurance company. I went to visit him and he introduced me to a colleague, who launched into a 20-minute sales pitch for their products. "Home and contents? We have it! Life? We have it! Automobile theft, collision damage, goods in transit, goods landed but not cleared, we have it! Liberians have grown to expect theft, flood damage, even losing their homes - no more!"

When he paused to catch his breath, I patiently explained that I was only visiting for a few days and my travel insurance policy was adequate to cover my few possessions. I wished them all the best in their quest to sell Liberians insurance and hoped that their brand-new office and freshly tiled floor would soon be ringing with the footsteps of risk-conscious clients.

Somehow, the very mundanity of this exchange encouraged me. Insurers may thrive on risk, but are naturally a risk-averse bunch. If African multinationals are investing in Liberia, they must believe the risk is manageable. If people buy their policies, they must believe that their claims will be taken seriously.

Over-eager insurance salespeople are tedious company. They are also an encouraging, a vital sign of capitalism. On my next trip, I hope I will be pestered by telemarketers and double-glazing salespeople. Now the post office is open, direct mail could be next. Liberians beware . . .

Madam President wows Harvard

Last week we celebrated our graduation from Harvard in style, with speeches from two female Presidents who have made history.

Harvard's President Drew Faust certainly has the most money at her disposal, but it was Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who drew the most rousing applause.


Some fellow students found her speech a bit dry (what did they expect?), but I loved it for the telling detail that characterizes Madam President's approach to leadership. I particularly liked this line from her speech: “To be successful you will need to be prepared to go that extra mile to spend time to improve the structures and systems with which you will be called to work." I sometimes feel we put too much emphasis on charismatic leadership and not enough on the slow, difficult task of institution building.

Meanwhile, a new host of interns have begun working in those same institutions in Monrovia. Among them are two fellow Brits, Preya Sharma and Diane Mak. Both, I am happy to report, at the Ministry of Finance, which is probably the most exciting place to be in Liberia right now. Unless the Lone Stars manage to qualify for the next World Cup . . .

Sushi

The Washington Post reports that a new sushi bar has opened in Liberia.

So now there are two of them. If only the sushi were made from local fish (fresh and delicious), I wouldn't mind. But importing tuna and salmon to serve to aid workers, when the rest of the population can barely get enough rice (let alone fish), seems a little absurd.

Let them eat spaghetti

When I last visited Liberia in January, there was much talk of higher rice prices and their impact on people's eating habits. After all, the Kennedy School's Nolan Miller has shown that rice consumers sometimes exhibit Giffen behaviour - that is, they consume more when the price rises, because they have had to cut back spending on vegetables, meat or other foods. (His paper is due to be published in the American Economic Review).

I had been hoping that Liberians would respond to the rising price of imported rice by switching to home-grown country rice, which tastes just as good but often has rocks in it and is difficult to find in the capital.

People often told me that "people in Monrovia won't eat country rice". But the Liberian palate may be more flexible than that! The BBC's Katie Price reports that restaurants in Monrovia have started serving spaghetti. A plate costs $1 - half that of a plate of rice. Could be good with a hot chilli sauce. I have eaten spaghetti in Somali restaurants, where the Italian influence on cooking lingers, but this is the first time I have seen or read about it being served in West Africa. Sadly, I doubt this will be a lasting response to the food crisis, because most Liberians don't eat in restaurants and the price of wheat has been going up too.

Now, how about making spaghetti from cassava flour?

How to do a census, African style

Liberia is holding its first census since 1984. This report comes from the BBC. I particularly like the special song composed for the census: "It's about development, not taxes!" I only wish the BBC played the whole track.

In the US or Europe, a census is a boring affair. The conscientious citizen completes a questionnaire and the less conscientious are filled in by statistical guesstimation. In Africa, a well-run census is a matter of civic pride. Liberia has trained enumerators to go to every village, house and shack in the country, however small. Most are volunteers. A few years ago, I was counted in the Tanzanian census when the enumerator came to the compound I was staying in. All she got for a hard day's work was a free T-shirt, saying 'Tanzania Sensa 2002'.

Soon we should know how many Liberians there are - 3.5 million, 3.8 million? I wonder if anyone is trying to count Liberian citizens outside the country?

Kenya back from the brink?

I'm listening to the BBC World Service as details of a political settlement in Kenya are emerging. If it's true, it sounds like a momentous agreement:
- An executive prime minister, appointed by parliament not the president
- A 50-50 split of cabinet ministers between Kibaki and Odinga supporters
- Best of all, an end to violence, if each side calls off their respective armed thugs

Having taken a Harvard course in 'Negotiations', I'm fascinated by the brinkmanship that led to this agreement, but I shudder at its human cost. If such an agreement had been made last month, over a thousand lives could have been saved. But then again, if the opposition had just let Kibaki get away with rigging the election, they wouldn't have got the agreement in the first place. Is this deal the beginning of a better Kenya? Or is this a flawed agreement, an old-fashioned division of spoils, power-sharing just a cover for business as usual?

For insight, I turn to two deeply committed, thoughtful friends. Wangari Kebuchi is a fellow student, a Kenyan in the USA. Jon Yates is a former colleague, a Brit working in Kenya for the Acumen Fund. Their witty comments are spiked with anger, but also optimism. Let's hope the putative agreement and its implementation justify it.

Bush and Butt Naked

President Bush spent a few hours in the Lone Star State this morning - Liberia, that is, not Texas. Strictly speaking, the founding of Texas in 1842 predates Liberia by six years, but as we say in economics, that's not a statistically significant difference.


As usual with world leaders on tour, President Bush had an entourage of hacks a little less hard-bitten from the usual khaki-clad Africa reporter. Kevin Corke from NBC News was especially shocked at the state of the infrastructure. Fortunately, my friend Conor Hartman (a Scott fellow, working for the Liberian government) was on hand to give him some perspective! After all, the World Bank did just spend $27m fixing that same road.

The New York Times has a long and thoughtful article on Bush's trip; it perceives the 'strong but largely one-way emotional bound' that links the USA and Liberia. I wonder, however, why it is still necessary to prefix all such articles with references to General Butt Naked, President Charles Taylor or child rape. I don't mean to downplay the horror of the Liberian civil war, or the challenges of recovery, but I long for the day when the good news goes in the first paragraph and the challenges in the second.

Having said that, when Bush visited Rwanda earlier this week, every report described it as 'genocide-scarred' or 'post-genocidal', which suggests the Liberians have at least another decade to wait before General Butt Naked is out of the news!

Back in Liberia: roads revisited

I've just got back from another trip to Liberia, this time to do some research on the Poverty Reduction Strategy and the government's policy for agriculture. It was great fun catching up with friends and seeing the progress that is being made - as well as enjoy the hot, sunny weather, which we didn't see much of last summer!

The international airport is still a little ramshackle (though it's also the friendliest airport I know!), but the visitor experience has improved a lot, thanks to a new hotel in Mamba Point and the resurfacing of Tubman Boulevard in Monrovia. The Chinese-Liberian crews were working hard to finish this when I visited, in order to impress visiting dignitaries like World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who spent two days there last week. The road will speed up the journey into town for the thousands of commuters who pile into little share-taxis that crawl gingerly around potholes while the UN classes LandCruise past them.

But with a bill of $27m for just ten miles of road, is this really the best use of money? Of course, it's donors' money, but instead of fancy machines like the one on the left, I wish I had seen more gangs digging ditches, grading dirt roads and relaying bridges in the rural areas. The paved roads from Monrovia to Buchanan and Ganta are clearly improving, but there's a big difference between cutting an hour off the 6-hour taxi ride to Ganta and actually connecting places like River Cess and Grand Kru counties to the capital. The fascinating Liberia Market Review (2007) suggests that only half the communities in the country have road access at all, and even fewer in the rainy season.

This matters for agricultural development, because research in Asia shows that villages with roads produce one-third more crops per head than villages without. It matters for public services, because education and health workers find it hard to visit these villages, let alone set up schools or dispensaries. (That you can find teachers and health posts in some of them anyway testifies to the ingenuity and dedication of entrepreneurs and NGOs). Rural development comes from turning little tracks into all-season roads with drainage ditches. $27m would dig a lot of ditches.

The people of Liberia know this better than any economist. When the government consulted the counties recently on its Poverty Reduction Strategy, people in every one of the 15 counties cited roads as their top priority. If you really want to pave roads, a few extra miles here or there would make a big difference - say, on the border between Liberia and Guinea, shown below. The paved road ends just 3 miles before the border. Now, if only the Guineans paved the road on their side too . . .

A refugee from New York in Liberia

Would you ever send your son to a warzone to escape a housing project? One Liberian mother did. This fascinating piece comes from the New York Times.

The lighter side of Liberia

Expatriates and visitors to Liberia often become disillusioned: by the persistence of poverty and slow pace of change. Such sentiments are common, even predictable, in Africa and even more so here. As the government and UN agencies begin to count, survey and enumerate their people, the grim realities of life are crystallized from anecdotes into statistics. Like a road accident victim recently admitted to intensive care, completing the diagnosis in its full horror is an essential step to recovery.

Our small Team Liberia has had its moments of disillusion around our dinner table in the Baptist Compound, but we have tried to keep our frustrations to ourselves. Most Liberians I know have little time for them. Our friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances – not a representative sample I know – are always ready to share a joke about "this is Liberia" and display a healthy skepticism of government and other authorities; but they are also cautiously optimistic. Anyone asking "How can you live like this?" would deserve a terse reply: "You should have seen it 5 years ago."

Government posters tell us "the process is on", but actions speak louder than words. Actions like those of our driver Ernest, pictured above with his family, who is building a house complete with zinc roof (the zinc is very important). Actions like my friends from the Ministry and CARI, some of whom are pictured below, who are preparing to leave Monrovia and reclaim their old offices in Suakoko where 15 years ago Charles Taylor trained his boys. Actions like those of Sampson, a friend from Buchanan who is travelling through villages that were depopulated only a few years ago, selling anti-malarials and antibiotics that might just keep a few more children alive.

The confidence of Liberians goes beyond their deep religious faith. I have not encountered the fatalism that I found so prevalent in (peaceful, stable) Tanzania. Nor have I met anyone who wanted to emigrate like in (peaceful, stable) Cuba. Many Liberians have emigrated or fled in the past and now want to stay put. I am writing this in Senegal, along with Nigeria one of the main sources of the thousands of young Africans who die from drowning or dehydration trying to get to Europe overland. I have never heard of a Liberian taking this route.

It has been a tremendous privilege to witness the rebirth of a nation at close quarters. I hope that future visitors to Liberia will be able to see beyond the grim statistics and experience the lighter side.

A tribute to two Team Liberias

Last week, Liberia celebrated its 160th birthday, making it the second-oldest state in Africa after Ethiopia. We were fortunate enough to be invited to the official ceremony in Buchanan, some 150km south-east of Monrovia. It was a memorable occasion: glamorous dresses, over-elaborate protocol, a fiery speech by Kimmie Weeks, a youth activist originally from Liberia and an inspiring one from the President, whose calm confidence never fails to impress me. Madam President thrilled - and humbled - us by mentioning in one passage "people from all over the world who are flocking to help us, including interns from Harvard University in this very room".

Working for the Liberian government has indeed been a humbling experience: it has shown me how a few dedicated leaders, like the President and her key ministers, can turn their country around. It has also reminded me, if I needed reminding, of my own inadequacy in the face of such enormous challenges. Finally, it has confirmed my belief in the power of teams - of two teams in particular.

The first Team Liberia is on the picture above: the family of interns. It has been great fun living with the family, but it has also been a privilege to learn from them. A few highlights: watching Yue Man pilot a multi-million-dollar grant application through the Ministry of Health. Emily's perfectly judged speech to the elders of the poorest village I have ever seen. Molly's inextinguishable enthusiasm for late nights in the Finance Ministry hothouse. Thank you Zach and Yesenia for late-night chats and encouragement, Jesse for opening all doors to us, Jeff for being the voice of reason and Colleen for surpassing Graham Greene in charm, talent and tolerance. (Hopefully your essays on Liberia will surpass his sales figures too).

The second and immeasurably greater Team Liberia are the dedicated people we have worked with in government. The President is one of many Liberians who have given up high-flying careers in the USA to go home and rebuild their country. Many have followed her personal call. Even more heroic, though perhaps less celebrated, are the ordinary Liberians who lived here throughout the war and refused to give up hope. Molly has a fantastic post on this, to which I can only add: if the returning diaspora and the survivors can pull together, this country will go far.

To the family, who leave this week: thank you and safe travels. To our generous friends and hosts: you have inspired me. This, too, is Liberia.

It's all about rice

The Law of Demand is one of the most basic rules in economics: when the price of something goes up, demand goes down. Professor Nolan Miller, my tutor in microeconomics at the Kennedy School, has just found the first exception to this rule: rice in China. The paper is at http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP07-030.

It turns out that some people in Hunan, Southern China, spend so much of their limited income on rice that if you raise the price, they consume MORE rice. This is because raising the price of rice, in effect, reduces their income. The only way to avoid the gnawing pain of an empty stomach is to spend less on pork and vegetables, and fill up on rice instead.

Economists call this 'Giffen behaviour', after a Victorian economist called Robert Giffen who asserted that poor people in Britain ate more bread when the price of bread went up. Nobody has ever verified that example, or found any other, until now. Professors Miller and Jensen comment on the irony that economists have spent the best part of a century convincing themselves that Giffen behaviour was a theoretical curiosum, only to find it in the staple crop of the world's most populous nation.

Interestingly, the result only holds for rice, among very poor urban households in southern China. Rural households grow their own rice, so a higher price is good for them. In northern China, a similar relationship holds for wheat, but it is weaker for two reasons. One, wheat can be consumed in different forms: as flour, or processed into buns and noodles. Two, rice is relatively cheaper in northern China than wheat is in the south, so a substitute is more readily available.

My own experience in China makes me think that this phenomenon won't last forever: transport costs are falling all the time, the poor in China are getting richer and regional differences in taste are less pronounced than they used to be. I was able to eat noodles in the south for only 1 or 2 yuan more than they cost in the north.

Sadly, I don't have the data to investigate this relationship for Liberia. Liberia is several decades behind China in development: while even the most isolated Chinese village has a regular bus service, many counties in Liberia are virtually inaccessible at this time of year. Rice production is only half of what it was in 1990, when the war began. Some farmers have switched to growing cassava, others are so hungry that they eat the rice seed the UN donates them instead of planting it. But it is in the city that rice is - pardon the mixed metaphor - a political hot potato.

In 1979, increases in the price of rice (mostly imported from the USA) led to riots in Monrovia. The government tried to put them down, using the army. But a 28-year-old sergeant, Samuel Doe, decided to put the government down instead. His coup ushered in 3 decades of bad government and eventually civil war. Small wonder that the new government has put growing more rice at the top of its agenda. But let the Chinese have the last word:

"If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people."