A falling population is a good thing!

[Fermi]

<cite>@xabad said:</cite>

first of all stop using foul language, i don’t know if your being flippant or just trolling but equating colonialism with birth control is stupid. self discipline and planning your family is a good thing for all people black or white just like education is.

just look at the report on this poor nigeri woman if you doubt the necessity of contraception.

 

A 37-year-old woman, weary and wailing with labor pains, was trying to give birth to her 13th child in Niger, a country with one of the highest birth rates in the world but where millions are now facing food shortages due to drought.

 

“I am exhausted, my uterus too,” said Zeinabou, as she struggled through labor at a birthing center in Maradi in southern Niger.

 

http://reliefweb.int/report/niger/nigers-high-birth-rate-caused-religion-poverty

 

 

Instead of foul you may have been aiming for sensational or lurid, which are fair accusations. I likened contraception to colonialism to highlight the injustices present in fertility control policies that are endorsed by the first world and pressured on the third. To borrow from Kuumba, "The neo-colonial relationship hinges on the exploitation of men's productive forces, but rests on the control of both the productive and reproductive forces of oppressed women. The current population policies and strategies of fertility control as promoted and orchestrated by an international population establishment are part and parcel of the colonial legacy that haunts "Third World" or neo-colonized women" (Perpetuating Neo-Colonialism Through Population Control, 1993). Population control is inherently colonialist because third world bodies are used to further a first world agenda.

 

Hitherto my comments examined the population paradigm and fertility policy in respect to environment issues and Malthusian theory. It seems you are approaching the subject as a regional, or person to person, issue. Even so, the number one determinant of family size is not contraception availability but the education and status of women, followed by economic security and infant and child mortality. Contraception became an issue in the developed world once women had a reason to wait, i.e education. The social and cultural evolution that preceded contraception is paramount to decreasing family size permanently. The developed world, however, has propelled the idea that contraception can take the place of social progression when evidence points to the contrary.

 

I don't view contraception as wrong or sinful in anyway. The use of contraception makes life easier for both women and men but I also understand it cannot take the place of social and cultural progress. Neither do I believe that increasing population is a problem. I stand firm by my initial statement claiming affluence and consumption are far more problematic than increasing population.

[DoctorKenney]

<cite>

@xabad

said:</cite>

cite them.

 

This is just one of them. I'm actually quite shocked that you're not aware that population control is a very oft-proposed policy when it comes to dealing with Africa and India

 

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/17291-un-unveils-plot-to-reduce-african-population

[xabad]

<cite>

@DoctorKenney

said:</cite>

This is just one of them. I'm actually quite shocked that you're not aware that population control is a very oft-proposed policy when it comes to dealing with Africa and India

 

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/17291-un-unveils-plot-to-reduce-african-population

 

LOL dr K come on. how are you gonna use right wing diatribe as supporting evidence. get better material. i am waiting

[DoctorKenney]

Read the citations saaxib. It directly leads to the actual UN Report

[Fermi]

<cite>

@xabad

said:</cite>

Actually the mortality has come down significantly but the fertility rate has not. this has caused an explosion of population causing all sorts of problems environmental, social, security and so on.

stop believing in conspiracy theories there is no western agenda for population control in africa.

 

You're referring to the epidemiological transition which scholars believe has skipped sub-saharan Africa. "Given the prevalence and trends in HIV/AIDS, the interaction between infectious and noncommunicable diseases is likely to be prolonged in sub-Saharan Africa for decades. This will transpire at the same time that sub-Saharan Africa will see significant population aging, and these trends pose major challenges to economic and social development which the region's health and social systems are—at least for now—unable to address."

 

In about 30-50 years most African countries will lose their middle age population to diseases, one of which is HIV. Coupled with already high infant mortality, this will devastate the African pop.

 

Reference:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114529/ "The Epidemiological Transition in Africa: Are there Lessons From Asia?"

 

The infant mortality rate in Somalia is 101.91 deaths per 1000 births, and that's within the first year. The second year mortality, if I remember correctly, is 1:5. Most African countries continue to have high child mortality while diseases are disproportionately killing the middle age and aging population. The WHO claims infant mortality has decreased 20% in urbanized areas of Africa and Asia (why lump Africa and Asia?), 20% in urban areas is minute. Lastly, children are an economic asset in this area of the world, so having more children is quite logical.

 

Africans were never given a chance to exploit their environment, as it is already being done for them.

 

neo-Marxist theorists argue that an increasing population is conducive to social progress.

[ElPunto]

Even so, the number one determinant of family size is not contraception availability but the education and status of women, followed by economic security and infant and child mortality. Contraception became an issue in the developed world once women had a reason to wait, i.e education. The social and cultural evolution that preceded contraception is paramount to decreasing family size permanently. The developed world, however, has propelled the idea that contraception can take the place of social progression when evidence points to the contrary.

 

I would like to point out - China's one child rule - is a way to bring down family size through enforcement and did not hinge on the education and status of women. Additionally - most of India has a lower fertility rate than Africa - but education and status of women is marginally better than other more fertile African countries.

 

Ultimately aside from personal considerations - African governments must be cognizant of the need to plan for and take advantage of the increasing population - only then can they turn this potential into success. But if things continue as is - you will have legions of young, hopeless Africans flooding into Europe and other developed countries seeking a fulfilling life.

 

[Fermi]

<cite>

@ElPunto

said:</cite>

I would like to point out - China's one child rule - is a way to bring down family size through enforcement and did not hinge on the education and status of women. Additionally - most of India has a lower fertility rate than Africa - but education and status of women is marginally better than other more fertile African countries.

 

Ultimately aside from personal considerations - African governments must be cognizant of the need to plan for and take advantage of the increasing population - only then can they turn this potential into success. But if things continue as is - you will have legions of young, hopeless Africans flooding into Europe and other developed countries seeking a fulfilling life.

 

Great example of a seemingly successful contraception campaign. Did China successfully reduce its population? Yes, but at a great cost and with little to show for in social and political progress. I personally value the latter more. Also, the Chinese pop will likely bounce back once the one child policy is relaxed.

 

Speaking of African potential, African land grabbing may be the greatest environmental, social and political threat to the continent.

[ElPunto]

There has been a lot of social progress in China particularly for women coupled with the economic boom of the 20+ years. Political progress is overrated. When you have a vibrant democracy like Nigeria unable to alleviate extreme poverty and China with its totalitarian government removing tens of millions from poverty - I'm pretty sure the average person will take the latter.

 

I couldn't agree more about the African land grabbing. When they've sold off everything - they're selling the very land underneath their citizens' feet. There is a fascinating piece in the National Geographic magazine in July about it. I will post a topic with the full article but here are snippets:

 

 

The Next Breadbasket

 

By Joel K. Bourne, Jr.

 

Photographs by Robin Hammond

 

 

She never saw the big tractor coming. First it plowed up her banana trees. Then her corn. Then her beans, sweet potatoes, cassava. Within a few, dusty minutes the one-acre plot near Xai-Xai, Mozambique, which had fed Flora Chirime and her five children for years, was consumed by a Chinese corporation building a 50,000-acre farm, a green-and-brown checkerboard of fields covering a broad stretch of the Limpopo River Delta.

 

“No one even talked to me,” the 45-year-old Chirime says, her voice rising with anger. “Just one day I found the tractor in my field plowing up everything. No one who lost their machamba has been compensated!” Local civil society groups say thousands lost their land and livelihoods to the Wanbao Africa Agricultural Development Company—all with the blessing of the Mozambican government, which has a history of neglecting local farmers’ rights to land in favor of large investments. Those who managed to get jobs on the giant farm are working seven days a week with no overtime pay. A spokesman for Wanbao denied such allegations and stressed that it’s training local farmers to grow rice.

 

Chirime’s situation is hardly unique. She’s just one character in the biggest story in global agriculture: the unlikely quest to turn sub-Saharan Africa, historically one of the hungriest places on the planet, into a major new breadbasket for the world. Since 2007 the near-record prices of corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice have set off a global land rush by corporate investors eager to lease or buy land in countries where acreage is cheap, governments are amenable, and property rights often ignored. Most land deals have occurred in Africa, one of the few regions on the planet that still have millions of acres of fallow land and plentiful water available for irrigation. It also has the largest “yield gap” on Earth: Although corn, wheat, and rice farmers in the U.S., China, and eurozone countries produce about three tons of grain per acre, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa average half a ton—roughly the same yield Roman farmers achieved on their wheat fields in a good year during the rule of Caesar. Despite several attempts, the green revolution’s mix of fertilizers, irrigation, and high-yield seeds—which more than doubled global grain production between 1960 and 2000—never blossomed in Africa, thanks to the poor infrastructure, limited markets, weak governance, and fratricidal civil wars that wracked the postcolonial continent.

 

The country has leased roughly 7 percent of its arable land—among the highest rates in Africa.

 

Many of those hurdles are now falling. Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth has hummed along at about 5 percent a year for the past decade, besting that of the U.S. and the European Union. National debts are declining, and peaceful elections are being held with increasing frequency. More than one in three sub-Saharan Africans now own cell phones and use them for mobile banking, to run small businesses, or send money to relatives in rural areas. After 25 years of virtually no investment in African agriculture, the World Bank and donor countries have stepped up. The continent is emerging as a laboratory for testing new approaches to boosting food production. If sub-Saharan African farmers can raise their yields to even two tons of grain per acre using existing technology—a fourfold increase and still a tall order—some experts believe they could not only better feed themselves but actually export food, earning much needed cash and helping to feed the world as well.

 

It’s an optimistic vision, for sure. Thailand currently exports more agricultural products than all sub-Saharan countries combined, and the specter of climate change threatens to hammer Africa’s yields. But the thorniest question is, Who will do the farming in Africa’s future? Will it be poor farmers like Chirime working one-acre plots, who make up roughly 70 percent of the continent’s labor force? Or will it be giant corporations like Wanbao, operating industrial farms modeled on those of the American Midwest?

 

Humanitarian groups that deal with global hunger and peasants’ rights call corporate land deals neocolonialism and agri-imperialism. Yet veterans of agricultural development say the massive infusion of private cash, infrastructure, and technology that such deals may bring to poor rural areas could be a catalyst for desperately needed development—if big projects and small farmers can work together. The key, says USAID’s Gregory Myers, is protecting the land rights of the people. “This could significantly reduce global poverty, and that could be the story of the century.”

 

 

 

 

Picture of plantations and small farms outside Maputo

 

This land outside Maputo provides a snapshot of Africa’s agricultural choices: Will its food be produced on giant, leveled plantations like Bananalandia (at left) or on small farms, called machambas? “It must be a mix of big ag and small,” says Dries Gouws, the sprawling banana farm’s founder.

 

 

 

“If you wrote a letter to God and asked him for the best soil and climate conditions for farming, this is what he’d send you,” says Miguel Bosch, an Argentine agronomist who manages Hoyo Hoyo, a nearly 25,000-acre corporate soybean farm in northern Mozambique. “It is a paradise for growers. I’ve spent many years farming in Brazil and Argentina and have never seen such soil.”

 

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/land-grab/

 

 

[Fermi]

<cite>

@ElPunto

said:</cite>

There has been a lot of social progress in China particularly for women coupled with the economic boom of the 20+ years. Political progress is overrated. When you have a vibrant democracy like Nigeria unable to alleviate extreme poverty and China with its totalitarian government removing tens of millions from poverty - I'm pretty sure the average person will take the latter.

 

I couldn't agree more about the African land grabbing. When they've sold off everything - they're selling the very land underneath their citizens' feet. There is a fascinating piece in the National Geographic magazine in July about it. I will post a topic with the full article but here are snippets:

 

Nigeria isn't an example of a vibrant democracy, it is highly corrupt and unstable. However it's economy can be likened to China, as it is the largest in Africa. At best, Nigeria illustrates a large economy doesn't necessarily alleviate poverty. China uplifted the population it thrust into poverty after the colossal failure of the great leap. I would regard that as an achievement as far as neutralizing the effects of a bad policy.

 

The one child policy prevented 200 million births, we will never know how many of those were forced abortions and infanticide. To say women experienced social progress under those circumstances is naive, or worse apathetic.

 

Great piece! I'll check out your thread.

 

 

[ElPunto]

^Take your pick of African countries if you don't like Nigeria. South Africa, Senegal etc - all exhibit poor records in lifting citizens out of poverty. And who said there isn't corruption in China? Yet the economic rise of that country despite being a dictatorship is indisputable fact.

 

Your linking abortions (forced or not) to the general upliftment or lack thereof of women is odd. There have been millions of abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade - at the same time - opportunities have expanded greatly in education, business and politics for women - a key definition of social progress. The same phenomenon has occurred in China despite the inhumane one child policy and state directed abortions.

[xabad]

Somalia is about to face a famine worse than the one in 2011. poor babies will once again expire right in front of tv cameras. casual suffering has become the norm. i really wouldn't mind contraceptives being mixed in with food aid to prevent needless agony.

[DoctorKenney]

<cite>

@xabad

said:</cite>

Somalia is about to face a famine worse than the one in 2011. poor babies will once again expire right in front of tv cameras. casual suffering has become the norm. i really wouldn't mind contraceptives being mixed in with food aid to prevent needless agony.

 

Contraceptives would at most, slightly reduce population growth in Somalia. What we need, is better farming techniques and higher farmer productivity.

 

Also, a lot of the land in southern Somalia which is arable, isn't being used for farming.

[xabad]

<cite>

@DoctorKenney

said:</cite>

Contraceptives would at most, slightly reduce population growth in Somalia. What we need, is better farming techniques and higher farmer productivity.

 

we are talking about about mitigating human suffering not population reduction. fahankaaga yaraa.

 

/DoctorKenney/" rel="nofollow">@DoctorKenney said:</cite>

Also, a lot of the land in southern Somalia which is arable, isn't being used for farming.

 

I give up on you

 

[DoctorKenney]

<cite>

@xabad

said:</cite>

we are talking about about mitigating human suffering not population reduction. fahankaaga yaraa.

 

/DoctorKenney/" rel="nofollow">@DoctorKenney said:</cite>

Also, a lot of the land in southern Somalia which is arable,

isn't

being used for farming.

 

All you're doing, is trying to put a band-aid on a wound that needs stitches. Your solutions have never worked before, but you want to try them again and again and again.

 

Learn the difference between short-term solutions and long-term solutions. Even if you drop millions of contraceptives into Somalia, it'll only slightly reduce population growth because a lot of people would voluntarily choose NOT to use the drugs.

 

But sure, keep promoting these failed "solutions"