Pictures of dead livestock in Africa break our hearts.  The remedy apparently is grain purchased from Ukraine with American worthless dollars to help feed the starving people who now don’t have livestock to eat because those already starved.

             As I look at these depressing pictures of skinny farmers crying over their dead cows and sheep, it’s hard to rein in my emotions.  Natural human empathy and sympathy make us want to empty our own storehouses and help.

             But emotional responses are not always the best.  At the risk of sounding uncharitable, I have to ask “were these farmers practicing mob stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization?”  No.

             Most problems have practical and reasonable solutions that are different than initial emotional reaction.  While my heart breaks for these folks, my head knows that their farming practices are deplorable.  My dad used to ask, whenever he saw a need or needy person “how is the best way to help?”  The quintessential example of how NOT to help is to give money to a drunk who is just going to buy more booze.  That’s not how you help.

             How to help is one of the most complicated questions in life.  How to help a child learn boundaries.  How to help the poor.  How to help climate change.  How to help the sick.  Name the issue, and how to help is the proverbial 64 million dollar question.  Do people need help?  Yes.  Do most of us want to help?  Yes. But deciding the best way to help is the hard part.

             We all know prisons have more than an 80 percent failure rate.  Normally an 80 percent failure rate makes us want to do something different.  How do you punish in a way that redeems?   I hazard a guess that “lock him up and throw away the key” is not the right answer.

             The Africa question is just as thorny.  I’ve had numerous delegations from Africa visit our farm (even one king) and all of them, bar none, left saying our model would not only work there but would solve all their problems.  So does shipping them grain with American money solve anything, really?  When I was at the Slow Food convivium in Italy a few years ago, I made a point of listening to every African delegation I could visit when I wasn’t speaking.  Every one, bar none, said “get your Western aid out of our country; it’s killing us.”  They said it displaced their indigenous agriculture, bankrupted entrepreneurs, fed war lords and extortion, and corrupted the society.  Wow.

             How do you help?

             What is an example of ill advised or ill placed help?