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Comment by dingribanda | Hacker News Reader

In some parts of Africa, growing khat is more lucrative than growing food. This causes acute food shortages. I am not sure how this is going to affect growing food, if cannabis is more lucrative than growing food.

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If it is more lucrative than growing food, does that mean you can buy an equivalent amount of imported food and pocket the profits? If that was the case then it would be an example globalization at work. (note, I don't know if it is)

Similarly, would wealthy khat growers be willing to pay more for food? Since they have more wealth? If so then it would create inflationary pressure on food prices and thus make growing food pay more than it had before.

I can easily imagine that the markets would be imbalanced at first, but it seems the mechanisms would correct that if it is simply more valuable to grow khat.

>If it is more lucrative than growing food, does that mean you can buy an equivalent amount of imported food and pocket the profits? If that was the case then it would be an example globalization at work.

If the infrastructure for transporting that food exists, then yes. The problem with relying on food from other countries is that it undermined your (food) security. It's possible that this can be used as a tool in in relations against your country or in the time of a crisis you're more likely to be left hanging. Eg look at all those companies/countries that depend on some important goods from China. During the current crisis the resources in China will be used in China first. Now imagine that same situation, but with food. I think that's why western countries subsidize agriculture so heavily.

If infra for food transportation does not exist then the point is even more valid.

If I have village where no food can be imported and limited amount of agricultural land. If I grow khat how am I going to feed my family if outside food can not come in ? Will the villagers be willing to pay more khat even when food is scarce ? I think I am missing something.

Dry food is extremely easy to transport. For the farmer, they are only growing cash crops if they can sell it outside of village, but if they sell it that means they can also import food.

At worst it might be raising food prices for non farmers, but farmers are going to be strictly better off.

Western countries subsidize agriculture because there are a lot of farmers and they are a powerful voting block. In the US, they are especially influential in low-population states with high senator-to-citizen ratios.

Yeay democracy, I guess.

Are there a lot of farmers in the US? I don't seek it out, but I've read a few times that small family farms are quite rare and most food is produced by huge agribusiness farms

Those agribusiness farms still employee people, and those people vote in the same ways as farmers, even though they may not own a farm

Agriculture is an enormous business in the USA, with 1% of the overall GDP. That may seem small, but consider that all USA industry combined is only 18% of the GDP. Many states in the country depend on agriculture as their #1 product. The USA is an exporter of food, with corn, beans, wheat and beets being the top crops.

When I was in Malawi many years ago cannabis was incredibly cheap. It's got a climate where you pretty much just have to drop some seeds by the road and a while later there are plants. I doubt it will cause much food shortages.

Yep, there's actually is a reason why it's called a weed. It's so incredibly easy to grow, and very forgiving.

They require a lot of water/irrigation, though. Probably also why they grow so fast.

Soil / fertilizer is possibly a limiting factor.

If it is more lucrative than growing food, I don't think it matters much if it's legal or not - it'll happen anyway, except that when it's all black market, there's associated violent crime, and the government can't tax any of the profits.

Not to mention inequality, exploitation and corruption that follows. I am happy for Malawi here.

True, the tax collection benefit is often overestimated though as legalization doesn't necessarily cause those who were previously participating in a black market to start paying taxes. Case in point, California.

The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone so this isn't a simple zero sum game. Individuals deciding to grow khat are, in theory, exchanging their grown goods for food to feed themselves (or else they are quite poor at planning for the future). Let's say the khat grower switched to corn, now the farmer just has a bunch of corn - does this somehow benefit his starving neighbors? If he can afford to share his corn with his neighbors he could afford to share even more food when growing khat.

So the question here isn't whether a farmer should grow khat or corn and how that effects the food supply - it's whether land distribution, the opportunity to chose what to farm, is distributed in a fair enough manner that everyone has the opportunity to avoid starvation.

It is extremely likely that a corrupt country doesn't have a decent allocation of land and has favored designating a lot of land to specific influential people, but whether those people grow khat or corn doesn't matter at all except in terms of further securing their influence.

If it's more lucrative to grow cannabis than growing cannabis means you've produced more food - the only issues arise when the supply of food is artificially limited (for instance due to import sanctions) and the value of that cannabis isn't convertible into food - in this scenario, then, the value of cannabis would tank and it'd become nearly worthless - or we'd have a scenario of uneven enforcement where an external to the country entity (like a drug cartel) is funding the farming and removing the product from the local market for re-sale elsewhere where the value hasn't tanked and, in this scenario, the best response is for the government to legalize the substance so that the market can equalize the value of the cash crop toward an actual value in terms of food.

Honestly, most of these weird market effects is because the US absolutely hates drug production and has a "war on drugs" that they actively export... All while constantly consuming truckloads of the stuff. If things were legalized in the US a lot of these problems would just naturally correct themselves - barring that legalizing them overseas removes a lot of the power that cartels have. This is since, if the product is illegal, only the large criminal organizations can afford the distribution network - if it's legal then a drug cartel can just purchase the drugs on an open market and allow farmers to individually make the choice of which crop to grow without worrying about people with guns.

Hemp seeds can be eaten and provide nutrients. Though I am not sure of the yield per hectare vs a staple crop like rice or wheat.

Presumably, the way they'd be growing, seeds aren't a desirable byproduct. The yield per acre for hemp seeds is around 700 pounds.[0] In comparison, rice can yield an order of magnitude more at 7471 pounds.[1]

Note that these numbers aren't for Malawi's climate but the difference is definitely still going to be there.

[0] https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fiber/industrial-... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/190479/rice-yield-per-ha...

I'm unsure of the long term potential of hemp seeds. I don't think the genetics have been optimized for growing seeds yet. Most people breed for CBD, THC, and specific terpene profiles. The higher volume, lower margin goods like seed and fiber have been relatively unexplored by the market.

Good point - I can only imagine that there is a lot of optimization possible for seeds if cannabis becomes used as a food source.

I'd argue that the genetics of cannabis/hemp for use as fiber have been relatively more explored than seeds by selective breeding of Cannabis Sativa during the milleniums in some cultures when hemp fiber was the fiber of choice.[0]

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-teenage-mind/201...

I believe fiber and seeds were the original uses of the plant. Psychoactive properties weren't discovered until much later.

As for genetics, the tools we have now are so much better for breeding than even 25 years ago. For example, cannabis in the 90s was ~5% THC. Now it's easy to find strains over 30%. Similarly, CBD flower and CBG flower didn't exist even 5 years ago and now we have 20% CBD flower strains.

I'm sure people are working on genetics similarly for seed production and fiber but the money isn't there yet. Entire supply chains have to be built to support the industry. It's not just the farmers and genetics. There's processing equipment on multiple levels required as well as consumer markets that have to be established.

What tools are you talking about? I thought that was due to many iterations of selection for specific traits.

Certain types of large manufacturing equipment must be built in a crop-specific way or at least benefit significantly by being designed for a particular crop.

For example, all cannabis flower (non-extracted) is harvested by hand and then trimmed by hand. Recently machines were made to trim large amounts of cannabis efficiently with high quality. It used to take one person at least an hour to trim a pound of weed. Now a machine can do 10lbs a minute.

Throughout the supply-chain, there are machines that must be built to support the physical scale. This isn't unique to cannabis, vaping had the same problem. The cartridges used to all be filled by hand until someone invested in the machinery. That what causes standards and grades to be created. None of that really exists in cannabis/hemp right now.

>Psychoactive properties weren't discovered until much later.

It's known for atleast 5000years.

IIRC rice isn't very nutritious, it's just calorie dense. In that regard adding hemp seeds to your diet may do more in the long run.

These are mostly myths, at best they are ignored, at worst, they perpetuate the assumption half the population in Asia would be nourishing themselves badly (since many thousands of years - seems a bit far-fetched, no?).

https://doctor.ndtv.com/living-healthy/8-myths-about-rice-yo...

Myth or not, ask people which have birds like Budgerigars, or watch it for your self. When you give them mixed food, they always go for the hemp seeds first, even by picking through maybe an ounce of corns/seeds until they get to the few hemp ones. Why is that?

Addict might go for heroine?

Kid might go for Sugary drink or cereals or snack over something like broccoli

What does it prove?

People in south Asia atleast don't consume Rice alone, rice has handful of amino acids when it's coupled with lentils (of different kinds) which have other complementary amino acid profile it becomes a complete protein like any other protein from whey

This is often smth which Indian people say, "bro our diet lacks protein". Yea what you consume everyday as "Dal bhaat rotti" if if it's protein then what it is?

Addict might go for heroine? wasn't what i meant to imply, nor does it fit the profile of the hemp seeds in birdseed since they come from the sort hemp which doesn't make you high.

More something like it's healthy and they know it. By whatever means...

Hemp is not the same strain as Cannabis producing plants, also Cannabis is harvested from the flower and so you don't typically get seeds.

Generally industrial scale cannabis is grown via cloning of feminized plants which generally do not produce seeds

I'm highly skeptical, needs some citations. In Kenya, Meru is one of the most fertile regions and it produces tons of bananas and other produce alongside khat. In any case, keep in mind that there are other "cash crops" besides khat (such as tea, coffee, pyrethrum, cotton) that have been (historically) more lucrative than growing food for large-scale farmers so this isn't something unique to khat.

I agree with your point. I am also having a difficult time understanding how a landlocked country expects to grow its exports in this area without some degree of condemnation from surrounding nations. Many nations are eager to have a reason for a conflict, this may be something used to propel the Malawi–Tanzania dispute.

Weird. One would think growing the more lucrative crop would provide money to buy food.

Especially one with a direct side effect of increasing the person's appetite.

Food is pretty localised for those without good storage means, if the local food supply reduces then prices rise. If there's less food than there was before, and people want the same amount then prices will inflate and overtake the extra income. Those not growing cash crop will fall behind, leading to pressure to stop growing food ... the local community needs food growing but the market won't price it properly. Whilst food is most vital the other crop can be sold in wealthier countries.

People grow coffee and chocolate whilst their countries suffer famines. People sell water rights to multinationals whilst their countries suffer droughts ...

The OPs argument would only make sense if importing of food or the massive global logistical system didn't already exist...

If one country stops producing a certain food type, that just increases the amount of money to be made in another country. It will balance itself out pretty quickly, which is why any shortage is acute and not a long term problem.

It's a net gain for the world, especially as they are already growing cannabis in other countries and you're taking money from cartels and criminals and turning it into a self-sustainable crop for impoverished African countries. Ones that provide a superior return than prior ones.

Hemp is an oilseed plant, the press cake is edible, and may may also be used as livestock feed.

Marijuana cultivation attempts to grow mainly seedless female plants, but hemp fiber farmers won't starve.

> growing khat is more lucrative than growing food

Could you please clarify more ? I think I am missing something. If khat pays more wouldn't it mean you can sell khat and buy food with that money ?

> If khat pays more wouldn't it mean you can sell khat and buy food with that money ?

Are you implying that you're going to buy khat from a local source. Then sell it to another local source, despite the fact that there's already a cheaper source, and then buy food that is more or less nonexistent locally, and expensive to import by yourself as a person without a warehouse?

> despite the fact that there's already a cheaper source

If there is already a cheaper source than growing Khat isn't more profitable. Khat is only more profitable if it can be sold for... more profit. That large profit should, assuming the market isn't distorted for other reasons[1], allow you to purchase more food than if you grew the food locally - if that isn't the case then growing food becomes more profitable.

1. I touched on this in a longer sibling comment, but a big reason is artificial supply restriction (as in, sanctions) with continued access to external markets for the black market goods.

acute food shortages would make growing food more lucrative than growing khat. there is probably something else going on

Khat suppresses hunger, so if you don’t have enough food to eat, you just chew more khat.

Also, stable food production requires multiple growing cycles. It is possible for short-term famines to be created by farmers' choice of more lucrative products. While food production can be restored over subsequent years, that is cold comfort to all the people who had to do without in the interim.

Which part of Africa specifically have you observed this?

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