Banda district Ghana didn't experience food insecurity until Colonialism

[Taco Truck 🚚]

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http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/20/486670144/an-archaeological-mystery-in-ghana-why-didn-t-past-droughts-spell-famine

This is a fascinating article I read yesterday and I thought it was very timely in light of Representative King's terrible remarks.

I just copied a couple of paragraphs but the whole article is very interesting.  She basically studied archeological evidence from a millennia and only found evidence of food insecurity once colonialism got into full swing.  It really is amazing what a thorough job she has done.

When you think of Africa you think of it as a place where people have been suffering and living in squalor since the dawn of time.  It's astonishing and rather saddening to think there are people in Africa who would be far better off living 500 years ago.  They simply don't teach this stuff in school.  To be fair to our high school teachers there isn't a lot of research in this area.  My lessons about Africa in HIStory class we basically "We came. We saw. We conquered."

[Antonio the Sixth]

Not surprising in the slightest. Famine in Africa is generally a product of global food markets, not the local agriculture.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Not surprising in the slightest. Famine in Africa is generally a product of global food markets, not the local agriculture.

I just never really realized that.  Obviously not taught in my American school.  I was just struck at how thorough the research was.  Of course speaking as a non archeologist.

Awful really.  Just sad.  I'm not making a direct analogy to colonialists but we really didn't have bad intentions when we went into Iraq.  I just look at what a mess we've made of the place.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Not surprising in the slightest. Famine in Africa is generally a product of global food markets, not the local agriculture.

And other disruptions such as war. 

Basically, anything that causes the normal things that people rely on to get through times of poor agricultural conditions to break down.  In this case, it seems, colonial policy prevented them from trading their goods with other regions for food, as they had done traditionally.

[Simfan34]

Not surprising in the slightest. Famine in Africa is generally a product of global food markets, not the local agriculture.

As someone who takes a particular interest in agricultural development and policy, in Africa, I can't understand on what basis you'd say this.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Not surprising in the slightest. Famine in Africa is generally a product of global food markets, not the local agriculture.

As someone who takes a particular interest in agricultural development and policy, in Africa, I can't understand on what basis you'd say this.

I thought it was common knowledge at this point. It's something I've heard repeatedly (and lot from loony-left "anticolonialist" sources).

[dead0man]

Global food markets have certainly hurt 3rd world farmers.  Sometimes it's just an outcome from markets and the way they work, other times protectionist policies in one country just ruins farming in another.  Read about peanuts, the US and Haiti sometime.  The short of it, we're assholes and protectionism is worse than we thought.

but none of that is why farming has gone to sh**t in the "breadbasket of Africa".

[Simfan34]

Protectionism has hurt farmers, yes, but that's a different issue from famine.

[ingemann]

Looking at this article, we could give it another headline.

Banda district Ghana didn't experience food insecurity until the end of the Slave Trade

Because food production according to the article hit it highest point (and began falling) around 400 years before "colonialism" became a serious factor in inland Ghana, and around 150 years before the European slave trade became a serious factor in inland Gold Coast, and it kept food security until the Slave Trade both European and Arab was destroyed.

The logical explanation for this would be that the Slave Trade served as a valve to get rid of surplus population, but also that it served as a way for the population to get capital from the outside. The end of the slave trade meant that the Ghanese export moved toward cash crops (losing land which could be used to grow food) instead, while at the same time losing a valve for surplus population.

So they traded food security for not dealing with intertribal warfare and raids.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

The logical explanation for this would be that the Slave Trade served as a valve to get rid of surplus population, but also that it served as a way for the population to get capital from the outside. The end of the slave trade meant that the Ghanese export moved toward cash crops (losing land which could be used to grow food) instead, while at the same time losing a valve for surplus population.

This seems really unpleasantly Malthusian.

[ingemann]

The logical explanation for this would be that the Slave Trade served as a valve to get rid of surplus population, but also that it served as a way for the population to get capital from the outside. The end of the slave trade meant that the Ghanese export moved toward cash crops (losing land which could be used to grow food) instead, while at the same time losing a valve for surplus population.

This seems really unpleasantly Malthusian.

It's not, Malthusians is about population collapse because of population increase to much, and Ghana haven't seen that yet (and likely won't it ever). In fact in pre-industrial societies food insecurity are common, the only societies it wasn't seen was societies which was stayed underpopulated or frontier societies. We saw some similar on Iceland where outside the famines cause by vulcanic activity, the population was significant underpopulated thanks to a extreme high child mortality (cause by very poor postnatal hygiene) and regular population collapse thanks to epidemics (as it Iceland was virgin territories for most diesease because they burned themselves out) the population had a high degree of food security.

But a high degree of food security also mean that you don't adopt new crops or farming methods, as example the food insecurity of the 30 Year War in Germany meant that the potato was widely adopted.

In sub-Saharan Africa where the economy was widely built on the slave trade, there was little incentive to improve agriculture or governance, as the Europeans destroyed the slave trade, that also meant a collapse of the economical and political structure, making the later European conquest even easier. A exception to this was South Africa, who had less develop states nad had more proimitive technology than most of the rest of Africa, where the slave trade had little economical and political importance, and their economy was based on trade with the Dutch, this meant that the local tribes adopted foreign crops and improvement in political structures, which made the Zulu rise and expansion possible, and also push changes to warfare.

[warandwar]

Y'all should check out Late Victorian Holocausts

[Simfan34]

The forces that enabled the Asante Empire to arise were largely driven by the slave trade. I'll elaborate on this in the evening when I have time.