2. African crop yield - If US can grow 159 bushels
A lot of African farmed land is heavily populated. In a small area you can have hundreds of farmers with tiny fields that have to support numerous people. That makes agriculture and the environment more of a social issue than a technical one. It is hard to imagine this in the west where the countryside has very few people and is farmed almost exclusively by machines. In this context yield is less important as a metric compared to how the land is delivering nutrional value. If the goal is to give local people a healthy diet then western food technoloogy can be very inappropriate.
A lot of African farmed land is heavily populated. In a small area you can have hundreds of farmers with tiny fields that have to support numerous people. That makes agriculture and the environment more of a social issue than a technical one. It is hard to imagine this in the west where the countryside has very few people and is farmed almost exclusively by machines. In this context yield is less important as a metric compared to how the land is delivering nutrional value. If the goal is to give local people a healthy diet then western food technoloogy can be very inappropriate.