ERADICATE POVERTY! IS IT POSSIBLE? THE UN SAYS IT IS, SO DOES THE ADB, BUT HOW? - The Agroforester

Without discretionary income the locals wait for infrastructural improvements, seemingly forever. This article is very short because the cause is so profound and the answer is so simple. · The absence of food, shelter and clothing were the earliest measure of poverty. · Possession of them meant the family was not poor. · The ability to produce any one of them in greater abundance than the family needed was wealth building. In the beginning man achieved by concentrating on food production, but not mass production. He simply met his family’s daily needs. Poverty was on its way to becoming an institution nearly 10,000 years ago. How can we possibly change it now? Why did it develop, mankind is older than that? Was poverty in the would-be dictionary then? Mankind’s refrigerator and kitchen cabinet were the living forest or other aspects of Mother Nature’s kitchen, but that kitchen has long been closed or abandoned, ignored or destroyed in favor of something more modern and practical to our new ways and demands of living. We all know that whatever system makes it to market first is most likely the one that we are going to use and eventually institutionalize. · Why do we use alternating current instead of direct current that is cheaper, safer and simpler to use? · Why do we use fossil fuel instead of biofuel for our internal combustion engines when the first successful fuel used was biofuel? · Why do we use the most popular computer operating system, which we know is not the most efficient? · Why do we continue using the existing agricultural system, when there are better systems that even predated but we abandoned in favor of perpetuating poverty as a tool, sort of replacing the warlords? Poverty is an Institution. The list can go on and on but the core question is about poverty and can it be eradicated? How did it become so widespread and accepted that it has become an institution. There are families that have been in poverty for generations, it is a system that people are born into and die there without ever having escaped it; they cannot pull themselves away from its holding powers. The social countermeasures to poverty consist of so many that in order to list them would be easiest by merely referring the reader to the blue pages of the municipal telephone book. Entire college curriculum is devoted to the subject. Outside of national defense budgets in most First World countries the largest budgets are devoted to the question of either poverty prevention or support to the poor or the reduction of poverty through various social approaches, many disguised as if doing some other public good. Unfortunately, few of the programs actually do more than perpetuate poverty. The Agricultural System is the “Key” that needs to be changed. When the warlords built the agricultural system and put it into action it was done on the backs of the cheapest labor possible. They had slaves. Food and water was the main expense. The land was available and all other needs could be supplied merely by directing the energy of the slave force. The production of food was meant to feed the army and cost was the concern. Keep the cost down. This system was never designed for the farmer to be anything other than a slave. No farmer was intended to create wealth; that would be punishable. This is the system that made it to the market first and although it has been modified throughout history it remains so true today that any reader of this would be hard put to find farmers in this world who, without government subsidies, do not remain poor. Before you run off to prove to the contrary please note that about half the world's population are farmers of one type or another. So to be significant in your findings please find at least 60 million exceptions out of 3 billion or about 2%. Agroforestry is the New Key. New and innovative practices must utilize everyday technologies that are modular, carbon neutral, locally based and conservatories of renewable consumables. “Producers”, fruit, nut, sap, fiber, medicinal, herbal and biomass must come from the forest, that we rebuild, rather than from plantations. Mother Nature’s formula is bio-diversity and in rehabilitating barren lands to forests this process must be the recipe and the local farmers the beneficiaries. Their massive numbers at the grassroots level is the formula for volume by “lots of little bits” rather than a “few’ (plantations) ‘with a lot” each. Bio-diversity, probiotics and forest-based processing are not only carbon neutral, it is a tremendous sustainable carbon sink that produces wealthy agroforesters in a major departure from tradition. To do this successfully requires consultation to bring the reader to a new mind-set. ...