NOT REAP PLEASE FUTURE VOTERS!!

July 29, 2011

Here as a blog post is a comment I made on Connie Veillette’s clever contest for renaming of GAFSP.

REAP is winning but has no reference to food or nutrition. What should be special about this new global initiative is not only or mostly raising agricultural productivity. The words "secure" or "security" should show up in some form in the acronym to signal this is about income poverty not only agriculture; and about regional and global collective action, not only helping farmers grow more per unit of labor or unit of land.

Moreover it’s also about dealing with the political and security concerns (as in Al-Shabab) that are the key causes of the plight of thousands of Somalis. On that, read Charles Kenny blog which doesn’t yield to the well-meaning but confused conclusions in this column in today’s Washington Post.

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