Smartest villagers ever he said " If the white man wants to give us money for our land then that means our land is worth more then their money". loool gotta love wise men in the villages.
Good documentary, very moving. I know poverty is not an easy thing to eliminate, but it breaks my heart to see people suffering and great talent wasted due to poverty. We all have to do more to reduce poverty and give more people a chance to live a decent and humane life...
This is the clearest explanation and example of land grabs and how and why they happen---from greed of the South African developers to the smaller greed and corrupt thinking of the Mali government to the folly of local village chiefs. Along the way a government had stolen land from under the feet of the people, with the connivance of the World Bank and African Development Bank. Apart from loss of food sovereignty, there will be massive environmental consequences, not least destroying old productive Shea trees.
Check out all the other high quality documentaries on our channel, and subscribe to support! THE WHY Foundation is a Danish NGO that produce and distribute documentary films about human rights and inequality. We believe that equal access to valid information, and an informed citizenry is the way to a more just world. Go to our website to learn more: www.thewhy.dk
I genuinely believe that this land belongs to those people and not Mali's government... So if they want to produce sugar on this land they should at least be given a percentage of the leasing fee going to the government, as well as wages if they want to employ them as farmers. This is only fair, and it's the government's responsibility to look out for their people, not the interests of international corporations. Ideally this land should be given only to a locally owned businesses to grow, manufacture and supply the sugar to such companies instead!
The end product of the sugar plantation is not the sugar its the returns from the investment, in this case the financial capital. Once people will do anything for huge profits, we are bound to face such challenges.
another eye-opening documentary. Surely there are better solutions than this. How can it be justified to take people's land like this? And destroy their livelihoods? Completely unfair - this needs to change - and those of us in the know need to work towards doing something about this.
Excellent documentary. It's important to have these issues and stories broadcast for everyone to see. It's such a shame that the opportunity to create a model for land distribution and agriculture suiting these african countries, their specific set of variables and fit to survive the next generation is shunned in favor of following decrepit western models. Very well assembled and enjoyable.
i think the main problem is not diet related. The introduction of these plantations, which could have been any sort of crop devastated homes and plunged a country into chaos.
these people dont have enough they deserve more and better they desperately need our help to make real development and greatly reduce the amount of poverty and corruption they endure. we can do more to reduce the amount of debt they have accumulated over the years'
"if you're not interested in change, then back your bags and leave" Ok, maybe he should leave their land, what gives him and his company any right to tell people to leave THEIR land???
I believe eating meat helped us to evolve. I point to our canines, and the fact that it tastes so good and that nutritionists that I trust have told me there are many benefits to eating meat. We shouldn't be having huge meat farms however, we should have more smaller ones and making do as best we can. If all this rampart mass production hadn't occurred the population would be more stable and everyone would be healthier. DIET IS EVERYTHING ALL PROBLEMS STEM FROM IT!
Making money from growing sugar is fine, but the more land used for that the less land for growing food (sugar cane is a horrible source of nutrition). Less food, the higher the cost to buy it.
Richard Blackmore True, sugar unfortunately however sells very good here in the west. And those farmers are most likely just harvesting whatever they can sell best at the highest price just to survive and feed their families.
There are many opinions in the film that have validity & will be debated for years to come. I noticed some other things throughout: The men are sitting around making the decisions, as usual. I'm glad some of the women got to talk. The child laborers didn't. Kassoum has 3 wives & 16 children, all laborers. Sugar isn't food. It's a luxury item. This isn't about food to the developers. 2008 panic = profit. 44:11 Massa Sanogo said Mima spoke about Zambia & the free health care. Let's find out.
They need activists and leaders who will not be sold. Listening to most villages it is evident that they are happy in how they lived, why do they need to have growth and revolution. No one looked malnourished. They all have healthy wholesome food, I don't think too much sugar would be good for diet, even if they imported food what will they get, processed sugar laden garbage. The GDP concept and the belief that if one is self sufficient they not contributing to growth is so brainwashed in the west that it is like a disease, more profit, more money more growth. This thinking has to be stamped out!!!
american farmers are running into african continent because they want to avoid paying high taxes in america. its not like america don't have land for farming. colonialism returning slowly but surely. yet they are killing blacks living in the white mans country everyday. wake up black people.african nation are calling.
that really is a good point unemplyment is happening everywhere due to technological unemplyment to keep emplyment we need to consume more, this paradigme could be easily changed by reducing the working hours, so the worker gets paid long term as before wile having the time for leisure comunity and so on, the 40 hours working week is more than 50 years old it's time to go to 35 and maybe 30 to balance things .
uncultivated arable land....basically land thats prime for cultivation. Africa has the resources and land for the World's survival. The powers that be been trying to kill off with diseases or starved the people to death or fuel ongoing wars. Not to mention greedy government and war lords
I think cold-blooded people and industries, not capitalism, are the problems. Whatever economic/political systems we are under, ultimately smart people (or already established power) with cold-heart will exploit the lesser. It's sick to watch those hypocritical businessmen in this video who claims himself to be a help to the people.
They were willing to employ the farmers and if they rejected the deal they were going to give them land outside of the plantation. This may have been a good project. As with so many African projects, social unrest destabilized opportunities for the young. Now rebels will probably choke the resources, why so much aggression? Even farmers in the US need to close their small farms and increase to large or go bankrupt. This modern issue is NOT just an African issue!
I was saying that it is not the effect of capitalism. It is the effect of not having proper laws about property. If there was, for example, a well-executed program of granting legal ownership of land to families that have used it for generations and are not claimed by anyone else, then under a capitalist system the gov't could not take it without asking - capitalism would protect the people and allow them to do with their land whatever they want.
People look out for their self interest first. That does not necessarily make them wicked. The politicians in this case are self-centered and short sighted..i attribute that to ignorance. It is however pitiful that some of the locals are the victims of this exploitation.
Says the American investor: "so it's a real win-win... apart from the next few years when the woman won't have an income". Be suspicious of anyone who uses the phrase win-win...!
We must redesign our Civilization. National Economic Security and Reformation Act to be activated this MONTH will change everything for the better for ALL is the Solution.
well it is a diet problem if i eat 1 kg of bread and you eat ~100- grams of meat we both eat the same resources, an american eats 3 times more than a romanian, we don't have famine in our country i was amazed of the statistic myself, but if you think for every kg of vegetables -100 grames of meat you realize that even though we eat the same quantity of food in resouces an american eats 3 times more, as well as we romanians eat like 3 times more than indians ,wich rarely eat meat.
every man no matter how stupid he is realizes that nature is the most important thing, my story over 7-8 years ago i was sick and stood in a hospital for a week just as spring came and flowers were blooming, the first thing that i noticed after leaving the hospital wasn't people family friends and things like that i was dizzy and it was the first time i realized that the things i never noticed before were the most important ones the foundation for everything else.
Land, as such, has NO VALUE! What gives land value is what it can produce! In the hands of a peasant farmer a piece of land can maybe produce enough in a year to allow that farmer and his family a meager existence. In the hands of a commercial farming company that land can produce a thousandfold or more than it can produce in the hands of the peasant farmer. So if the commercial farmer is willing to pay a lot of money for a piece of land, the price is based on the potential production of that land when it is farmed commercially. If it is farmed in the age-old tradition of the peasant farmers, that land is worth NOTHING!!
Who determines who's useless? What factors do you use to form the list of useful, and useless? Ethnicity, religion, skin tone, region, economic status, what factors do you suggest? I'm with you on the resource idea, but we depart from there. It's reasonable to have a few thousand people control 50% of the worlds wealth, but we need to reduce the numbers of "useless" people? If that is sane, then I'm happy to be labelled mad.
It really depends on the definition of wickedness. If one has lied, or stolen, or takes advantage wrongly, or dishonors their parents, or is perverse, or unfaithful to the Creator, I would say they are wicked because that is how Jesus defined wickedness. Yes, it is a pitiful state that these have been put in by a group more powerful than they are at the time. Power ebbs and flows with time. This world is full of change. One thing that doesn't change is that there are the poor.
i assume you're talking about energy content vs weight. and this video is about farm space. meat is alot more taxing to farm space than crops. Meat was a luxury not so long ago. you realy went of topic quite a bit
Well, this whole "government taking land from people to sell to int'l companies" is not the effect of capitalism. My family owned real estate in a big polish city, the communists came and nationalized it (the money given as compensation allowed him to... buy eyeglasses!). Then capitalism was restored and my family got the land back (a few days ago we sold a small fraction for 100,000$). So don't blame capitalism for people being robbed from their resources, please.
We need to change our junk culture. Spend less time stressing in offices and more time leading a healthy lifestyle. Eat healthy and therefore cherish good farming practises rather then consuming mass produced toxic junk. We treat ourselves like shit its no wonder we trample on the poor Malians. If you think this sort of exploitation is good your a blight on mans soul. But your not alone so why not party untill this ship has sunk. Captain planet gonna whoop your ass.
Mali was once a great empire from 1230-1600. It was the largest empire in West Africa known for its riches and wide reaching culture, laws and customs.
Smartest villagers ever he said " If the white man wants to give us money for our land then that means our land is worth more then their money". loool gotta love wise men in the villages.
God created everything in abundance. The greedy and dishonest people brought in poverty.
this is not the development of africa. this is another TERM of colonisaton of AFRICA .
true , very true .
Good documentary, very moving. I know poverty is not an easy thing to eliminate, but it breaks my heart to see people suffering and great talent wasted due to poverty. We all have to do more to reduce poverty and give more people a chance to live a decent and humane life...
This is the clearest explanation and example of land grabs and how and why they happen---from greed of the South African developers to the smaller greed and corrupt thinking of the Mali government to the folly of local village chiefs. Along the way a government had stolen land from under the feet of the people, with the connivance of the World Bank and African Development Bank. Apart from loss of food sovereignty, there will be massive environmental consequences, not least destroying old productive Shea trees.
Great vid. Very informitive. Thank you
Check out all the other high quality documentaries on our channel, and subscribe to support!
THE WHY Foundation is a Danish NGO that produce and distribute documentary films about human rights and inequality. We believe that equal access to valid information, and an informed citizenry is the way to a more just world. Go to our website to learn more: www.thewhy.dk
I genuinely believe that this land belongs to those people and not Mali's government... So if they want to produce sugar on this land they should at least be given a percentage of the leasing fee going to the government, as well as wages if they want to employ them as farmers. This is only fair, and it's the government's responsibility to look out for their people, not the interests of international corporations. Ideally this land should be given only to a locally owned businesses to grow, manufacture and supply the sugar to such companies instead!
it is an amazing documentary..gave us both the point of view..for and against the project...its upto us to decide which one is right...
The end product of the sugar plantation is not the sugar its the returns from the investment, in this case the financial capital. Once people will do anything for huge profits, we are bound to face such challenges.
another eye-opening documentary. Surely there are better solutions than this. How can it be justified to take people's land like this? And destroy their livelihoods? Completely unfair - this needs to change - and those of us in the know need to work towards doing something about this.
The answer for right thinking people are what can be done about it
+Roberto Day yes agreed. empowering oneself and others around us.
Great documentary, thanks for sharing both sides. My thoughts are with good people like Kasoum and Massa, people with hop and insight.
Excellent documentary. It's important to have these issues and stories broadcast for everyone to see. It's such a shame that the opportunity to create a model for land distribution and agriculture suiting these african countries, their specific set of variables and fit to survive the next generation is shunned in favor of following decrepit western models.
Very well assembled and enjoyable.
NICE DOCUMENTRY
i think the main problem is not diet related. The introduction of these plantations, which could have been any sort of crop devastated homes and plunged a country into chaos.
very crucial topic!!!
26:00 clusterfuck of useless sound. Really excellent doco otherwise. A real eye opener. This stuff really should be in the news.
I feel sorry for the baby at 12:24.
me too.. poor little thing.. and its not even a gentle rocking motion.. its a slam dunk
This is going over my head.
you make good documentaries\!
Respect for Mali & Humans
Give Africans the technology to mass harvest the food.......
Africa needs its sons and daughters. If you're in diaspora, please educate yourself. Learn something that will help you to go back and make an impact
If this keeps up there will be nothing but bone and desert where there was forest and life.
What's the name of the piano song at 50:00 ?
these people dont have enough they deserve more and better they desperately need our help to make real development and greatly reduce the amount of poverty and corruption they endure. we can do more to reduce the amount of debt they have accumulated over the years'
"if you're not interested in change, then back your bags and leave" Ok, maybe he should leave their land, what gives him and his company any right to tell people to leave THEIR land???
We stand for World Equality ( EMC )
the only problem is its not countries which are doing this now its independant business men. Money is power to rival governments today and its scary
38:56 13 years later there is war in mali
My poor Mali ... :/
" Awareness campaign " = propaganda campaign.
I believe eating meat helped us to evolve. I point to our canines, and the fact that it tastes so good and that nutritionists that I trust have told me there are many benefits to eating meat. We shouldn't be having huge meat farms however, we should have more smaller ones and making do as best we can. If all this rampart mass production hadn't occurred the population would be more stable and everyone would be healthier. DIET IS EVERYTHING ALL PROBLEMS STEM FROM IT!
Making money from growing sugar is fine, but the more land used for that the less land for growing food (sugar cane is a horrible source of nutrition). Less food, the higher the cost to buy it.
Richard Blackmore True, sugar unfortunately however sells very good here in the west. And those farmers are most likely just harvesting whatever they can sell best at the highest price just to survive and feed their families.
@ 26:30 ---It's a real win win, except they won't have any income for a few years......In what world does that statement make any sense? Sociopath?
There are many opinions in the film that have validity & will be debated for years to come. I noticed some other things throughout:
The men are sitting around making the decisions, as usual. I'm glad some of the women got to talk. The child laborers didn't. Kassoum has 3 wives & 16 children, all laborers.
Sugar isn't food. It's a luxury item. This isn't about food to the developers. 2008 panic = profit.
44:11 Massa Sanogo said Mima spoke about Zambia & the free health care. Let's find out.
They need activists and leaders who will not be sold. Listening to most villages it is evident that they are happy in how they lived, why do they need to have growth and revolution. No one looked malnourished. They all have healthy wholesome food, I don't think too much sugar would be good for diet, even if they imported food what will they get, processed sugar laden garbage.
The GDP concept and the belief that if one is self sufficient they not contributing to growth is so brainwashed in the west that it is like a disease, more profit, more money more growth. This thinking has to be stamped out!!!
american farmers are running into african continent because they want to avoid paying high taxes in america. its not like america don't have land for farming. colonialism returning slowly but surely. yet they are killing blacks living in the white mans country everyday. wake up black people.african nation are calling.
that really is a good point unemplyment is happening everywhere due to technological unemplyment to keep emplyment we need to consume more, this paradigme could be easily changed by reducing the working hours, so the worker gets paid long term as before wile having the time for leisure comunity and so on, the 40 hours working week is more than 50 years old it's time to go to 35 and maybe 30 to balance things .
Nearly 60 procent of the 'what' land world wide?????? I really wish there were subtitles.
uncultivated arable land....basically land thats prime for cultivation. Africa has the resources and land for the World's survival. The powers that be been trying to kill off with diseases or starved the people to death or fuel ongoing wars. Not to mention greedy government and war lords
so what happened to the plantations?
God Bless ***********
I think cold-blooded people and industries, not capitalism, are the problems. Whatever economic/political systems we are under, ultimately smart people (or already established power) with cold-heart will exploit the lesser. It's sick to watch those hypocritical businessmen in this video who claims himself to be a help to the people.
They were willing to employ the farmers and if they rejected the deal they were going to give them land outside of the plantation. This may have been a good project.
As with so many African projects, social unrest destabilized opportunities for the young. Now rebels will probably choke the resources, why so much aggression?
Even farmers in the US need to close their small farms and increase to large or go bankrupt. This modern issue is NOT just an African issue!
I was saying that it is not the effect of capitalism. It is the effect of not having proper laws about property. If there was, for example, a well-executed program of granting legal ownership of land to families that have used it for generations and are not claimed by anyone else, then under a capitalist system the gov't could not take it without asking - capitalism would protect the people and allow them to do with their land whatever they want.
People look out for their self interest first. That does not necessarily make them wicked. The politicians in this case are self-centered and short sighted..i attribute that to ignorance. It is however pitiful that some of the locals are the victims of this exploitation.
mankind is incredible and desperately wicked! That is why poverty. Jesus has it right about us.
so that is the real background of the Mali-France War
I'm not sayin it's a land grab, but it's a land grab.
Says the American investor: "so it's a real win-win... apart from the next few years when the woman won't have an income".
Be suspicious of anyone who uses the phrase win-win...!
We must redesign our Civilization. National Economic Security and Reformation Act to be activated this MONTH will change everything for the better for ALL is the Solution.
Zajimave.
Well now they are paying the price for resisting the progress. Their dreams of food sovereignty gone.
Definitely not what Martincitopants signed up for
"Massa and Kassoum wait for the next development project to arrive on their land."
Sugar or snake oil?
Horse of Troy for American farm and your friends Esso, Shell, BP, Eni & more
well it is a diet problem if i eat 1 kg of bread and you eat ~100- grams of meat we both eat the same resources, an american eats 3 times more than a romanian, we don't have famine in our country i was amazed of the statistic myself, but if you think for every kg of vegetables -100 grames of meat you realize that even though we eat the same quantity of food in resouces an american eats 3 times more, as well as we romanians eat like 3 times more than indians ,wich rarely eat meat.
every man no matter how stupid he is realizes that nature is the most important thing, my story over 7-8 years ago i was sick and stood in a hospital for a week just as spring came and flowers were blooming, the first thing that i noticed after leaving the hospital wasn't people family friends and things like that i was dizzy and it was the first time i realized that the things i never noticed before were the most important ones the foundation for everything else.
32:25 🤬
2008...strange...such a coincidence... for so many awful things started worldwide...
Land, as such, has NO VALUE! What gives land value is what it can produce! In the hands of a peasant farmer a piece of land can maybe produce enough in a year to allow that farmer and his family a meager existence. In the hands of a commercial farming company that land can produce a thousandfold or more than it can produce in the hands of the peasant farmer. So if the commercial farmer is willing to pay a lot of money for a piece of land, the price is based on the potential production of that land when it is farmed commercially. If it is farmed in the age-old tradition of the peasant farmers, that land is worth NOTHING!!
It's now clear when we having western intervention in Mali. There is a lot at stake for the imperial west.
Who determines who's useless? What factors do you use to form the list of useful, and useless? Ethnicity, religion, skin tone, region, economic status, what factors do you suggest?
I'm with you on the resource idea, but we depart from there. It's reasonable to have a few thousand people control 50% of the worlds wealth, but we need to reduce the numbers of "useless" people?
If that is sane, then I'm happy to be labelled mad.
It really depends on the definition of wickedness. If one has lied, or stolen, or takes advantage wrongly, or dishonors their parents, or is perverse, or unfaithful to the Creator, I would say they are wicked because that is how Jesus defined wickedness. Yes, it is a pitiful state that these have been put in by a group more powerful than they are at the time. Power ebbs and flows with time. This world is full of change. One thing that doesn't change is that there are the poor.
i assume you're talking about energy content vs weight. and this video is about farm space. meat is alot more taxing to farm space than crops. Meat was a luxury not so long ago. you realy went of topic quite a bit
Yes it is capitalism just because it benefited you when Poland came to being a capitalist state does not mean capitalism is not exploiting ppl daily.
Capitalist greed at it's worse.
As usual, the rich countries taking advantage of the poor.
so don't just compare your situation to everyone else's buddy
Utterly disgusted and ashamed of Western arrogance.
Well, this whole "government taking land from people to sell to int'l companies" is not the effect of capitalism. My family owned real estate in a big polish city, the communists came and nationalized it (the money given as compensation allowed him to... buy eyeglasses!). Then capitalism was restored and my family got the land back (a few days ago we sold a small fraction for 100,000$). So don't blame capitalism for people being robbed from their resources, please.
We need to change our junk culture. Spend less time stressing in offices and more time leading a healthy lifestyle. Eat healthy and therefore cherish good farming practises rather then consuming mass produced toxic junk. We treat ourselves like shit its no wonder we trample on the poor Malians. If you think this sort of exploitation is good your a blight on mans soul. But your not alone so why not party untill this ship has sunk. Captain planet gonna whoop your ass.
8:05 the lie continues
African governments betraying their own people for 30 gold coins. Where else has this happened? *shrugs and walks away*
gtenhave Pretty sure he said arable land.
THEY HAVE NEVER HAD A STABLE AFRICA....WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?
Before the european colonization, Africa's agriculture was for growing food, not money crops. There were centuries of relative stability.
Mali was once a great empire from 1230-1600. It was the largest empire in West Africa known for its riches and wide reaching culture, laws and customs.
7:10 - "Contract Employees" - Oh, you must really mean...... LOL!!!!! ROFLMAO!!!!! SHARECROPPERS!!!!!! SHARECROPPING!!!!!! SLAVES!!!! SHARECROPPING SLAVES!!!!!!
This is when OBAMA became president.