Could a Peanut Paste Called Plumpy'nut End Malnutrition? - NYTimes.com
This is a wonderful story, but it begs the question: after it gets young children in impoverished countries through the critical first few years, will it reduce poverty in any way, or does it leave in place virtually all the structures which impoverish the people of these countries?
Henry George wrote about "the robber that takes all that is left." Plumpy'nut makes sure there is more left for that robber.
The final paragraphs touch ever so lightly on this:
Collins asks, “How are they addressing the need for poor people in Haiti not to be dependent on outside intervention in the first place?”
This question hung, unanswerable, over Salem’s journey through Haiti. Salem went there with a promise to donate a shipping container filled with $60,000 worth of Nutriset-patented products to Partners in Health, the charity run by her friend Paul Farmer. While grateful, the organization still preferred to manufacture its own product, Nourimanba, with the profits accruing to local farmers. But even this program was more a principled exercise than a development strategy. Haiti’s endemic problem of malnutrition wasn’t something you could solve with peanuts. Partners in Health also took Salem on a couple of home visits. At a one-room shack in Cange, a mother presented her 3-year-old daughter, saying she had gained 11 pounds on a regimen of Nourimanba. But the mother complained that there was no help for other serious problems she faced, like the fact that she had no job and the tin roof of her shack leaked.
Out in the hills, down a muddy path shaded by coconut palms, the health workers checked in on a small wooden farmhouse. Two children living there were on a regimen of ready-to-use food — and six were receiving nothing. The older ones watched as their little sister wolfed down an entire cup of peanut paste for the benefit of the visitors. The children’s grandmother, who was looking after them, was asked why malnutrition had been diagnosed in these two and the others not. She said she couldn’t really say, except that there simply wasn’t enough food to go around. There was no foil-wrapped answer to the maddening persistence of poverty. All that existed was a determination to meet the challenge with all the fallible tools of human ingenuity.
The fallible tools of human ingenuity. Perhaps some of that ingenuity could be applied to understanding and correcting the structures which pour the wealth of nations into the pockets of a relative few in each nation. Those structures are neither "natural" nor "necessary." Start with reading Henry George -- a couple of his speeches, perhaps "The Crime of Poverty" and "Thou Shalt Not Steal," followed by a recent abridgment of Progress and Poverty. You'll know more about poverty and its causes -- and what needs to be reformed in order to end involuntary poverty -- than many of the world's "experts," who seek to tweak poverty while not disturbing the status quo -- not rocking any yachts or luxury cruiseships. Leave more for the robber who takes all that is left, if you will.
George used his ingenuity to understand the structures and to describe them clearly to his readers and listeners.
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