In relation to the food aid/ debilitating effect of US dumping upon poorer nations, I'm reminded of a piece I read years ago, in Harper's I believe, a survey about fresh water (before it became a hot topic, kinda predicted that it would be a hot topic). The related point in the piece was that low productivity in most nation's has much less to do with money invested or innovation (tho that plays a role), but more to do with lack of good water. Again the US is pretty blessed in this regard; it's starting to feel the pinch as well, but it's worse most everywhere else. In addition to this, the irrigation systems in place in India for example (as it was an example in the article if memory serves, there or Pakistan or somewhere near the subcontinent) is pretty shockingly inept. Massive improvements have been made by peace corp-y volunteers teaching farmers not to simply dump water (as you lose so much of the strained resource to evaporation) but to rig up a bucket with holes that drips the water slowly throughout the day. I think the cost for such a system was around $5 per bucket once all the riggin was put in place, and it's almost as effective as the systems the US uses that costs hundreds or thousands times that. In addition of course the price can be greatly reduced once you know the principles behind it and don't hafta go buy a plastic bucket but instead rig something up yourself using tightly-woven cloth, or the chaffe of wheat, or what-have-you, I'm not on the ground, the farmers will be better at this I'd wager. Anyway, just wanted to pass that along, as I like it when the issues get more complex and aren't reduced to simple good/bad formulas, as those are usually off somewhere along the way...