Looks like SA is full throttling their land reform. What do you guys think? How will this go down in the long run? Will it be a new Zimbabwe or will SA be able to create a thriving economy?
This is most likely going to end horribly for a number of reasons:
- Skill mismatch. The people currently on the farms are probably better at running those farms than whomever else comes on in. I don’t know much about farming, but I’m guessing whoever comes in will be worse off than the people who currently do it.
2, Governments are almost always corrupt. I’m willing to bet some $$$ that whoever ends up with the land knows someone or paid someone. This usually means it’ll be less efficient than before, when actual farmers were running the show.
3, Economies of scale – farms are consolidated now, breaking them up and selling them will only lead to inefficiencies. Also how is a person expected to buy all of the equipment to run a farm? I’m guessing it’s a lot.
Recommending you “How Asia works”, by Joe Studwell… Speaks about finance, manufacturing and agriculture in Asia. Gives context to those opinions driven by feelings about land reform…
For instance…What yield per acre do you think is achieved in family gardening vs industrial farming?
Depends on who the family farmers are. The book itself grouped the nations into high IQ and low IQ groups except it never outright called it that way. The author concluded stuff worked in china, south korea, taiwan and japan, but didn’t work in the phillipines, indonesia and thailand. Does SA have enough chinese to make the reform work?
No pseudo science, there’s your answer.
Since Africa is the cradle of humanity, it would be nice if evolution and mother Earth put their heads together and created some sort of new food. Humans have been eating pretty much the same food for billions of years. Has to be a better way.
Thank goodness SA has a thriving diamond industry. Though it’s going to face challenges if people like Nery opt for manmade diamonds.