Reply #54: I thought

[tama]

the issue was getting rid of famine. Industrial aggriculture is not the answer, it's the problem - terribly wastefull in energy economy (needs whole technoculture based on fossile fuels to support), poisons the healthy soil, uses up ground water. Green Revolution is a hoax, it has not produced more but less edibles, just more of small variety of cash crops. And it's destroying the natural fertility of soil, the carrying capacity of this planet.

Most effective (per acre, energywise etc.) way to feed people is multilayerd home gardens / forest gardens with lots of variety. Africa is rich with wide variety of edible trees that give huge yield per acre, trees that can be and are being used also to reforest arid environments with great success.

People in Northern Niger were "forgotten" and left in peace for couple decades by UN development specialists and even their own governement, thinking that desertification is unstoppable and those people are doomed anyway. Some litterate guy happened to visit those parts resently and to his amazement found lush forests of edible and other trees, created by ancient gardening technology to which people returned when left in peace by the (colonialist) "developers". They are now doing fine, their newly recreated forest gardens providing food, medicine and firewood in sustainable way.