Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia,vainly used to exhort his countrymen to rouse themselves from city idleness and "Go back to the Land". They didn't - prefering other modes of livelihood than hoeing their maize fields - "Growing Food for the Nation".The human mind works in ways most wondrous !
An International Charity gave emergent farmers a plough,tractor and trailer to start up in farming.
Some did just that but a sizeable group of wily entrepreneurs ignored the rules and
- took the plough to market,
- sold it,
- bought crates of beer with the cash,
- taking their customers on the trailer to their new Beer Garden
- returned the empties [recycling you understand]
- bought even more beer and another load of customers
Not quite the sort of gardening KK had in mind I expect!
This little tale illustrates the difficulty in reversing the flow from the rural areas to the city.
Ask any school child in a developing country what their ambition is and they will reply Doctor,Lawyer,Professor
However in 1948, all the Doctors,Lawyers,Professors who had survived the wartime persecutions arrived on the beaches of Israel, to find that every one else was a Doctor,Lawyer,Professor.
And so some of the finest minds of Europe were put to work on the land, with the inevitable result that today Israel is the most innovative and inventive agricultural nations on earth.
Pity they cannot agree with their neighbours - or each other for that matter!
