agriculture

Long time ago, the many countries in the world including the United States of America started their developmental path via Agriculture.  In the USA, we are still seeing the traces of agriculture all over the places.  If you visited  Florida and North Carolina, you will see large farms like sugar canes and animal farmings.   The foods produced in these countries are spread in stores across the countries and at a regulated prices set by regulating bodies that are responsible for pricing and those of us living in these countries stand on the lines in grocery stores to pay the mark prices for the produce without telling the seller to change their price.In Africa, we are still carrying on with Agriculture. Sometimes we produce more but do not have the means to send  the crops to the market or transport them to our neighboring countries  whose Citizens are starving.  Have some of you seen some horrible TV ad from some desperate NGO group showing  poor African kids with flies dancing in their faces to show how desperate they needed  funds to help them? These folks are not showing what is actually going on on the ground where they are working. We know the African story. Some of us also know the stories from  the developed countries that we are living. We know the cost for Firestone tire, we know the cost for our daily cup of coffee, we know the cost for a chocolate bar driving from Atlanta to Washington DC,  and we know the cost for one cell phone. What those of  us failed living in the developed world failed to do is to TEACH OUR  PEOPLE HOW TO FISH.

We need to teach our farmers how to set prices for their produce and choose their buyers. We need to stand up and be prepared to sell their produce or introduce them to people that will not take their hard earned efforts for free.We should be able tell the story of the rubber tapper in Liberia that can not find money to buy Chloroquine pills when hit with Malaria, we should be able to tell the story of cocoa and coffee farmers who leave every morning at 6:00 AM to harvest coffee beans but can not afford sending his child to best school like Harvard or Cambridge and not able to enjoy the good feeling received by the president or prime minister in the developed world.SAMDA is coming with the help of donors and friends of SAMDA to do the following for those Countries in Africa that we are presently operating:

1. To help farmers to sell their produce at a reasonable prices to both local and international buyers
2. To work with friends and donors to train our many farmers to make best use of the soil via introduction of biodiversity methods.
3. To encourage SAMMDA members states officials to share information about food shortage in a particular country and for each member state to rally and send food in that direction. what we are saying here is if for example, there is a rice shortage in Liberia; we want for our team in Nigeria to rally and purchase bags of rice to send to Liberia for the population there ( sharing what we produced in Africa among Africans).
4. To encourage more communications from African Agriculture experts working with SAMDA to meet annually to set agriculture agenda for our members countries and put forth the list of our agriculture students for scholarships.
   

We in SAMDA want to follow the agenda set forth by our leaders during the OAU conference in
Ethiopia. That agriculture agenda requested that African must try to share their resources among
its people. We are thinking seriously that since 1963, if Africans were following this path, many
People including their kids will not be hungry and show the nakedness of Africans to the outside World.