Why Can't People Feed Themselves?

So then why did the colonizers describe and create the general view that these practices were indeed backward and inferior?

Agriculture became merely a means to extract wealth - much as gold form a mine - on behalf of the colonizing power. Agriculture was no longer seen as a source of food for the local population, nor even as their livelihood. John Stuart Mill reasoned that colonies should not be thought of as civilizations or countries at all but as "agricultural establishments" whose sole purpose was to supply "larger community to which they belong" The colonized society's agriculture was only a subdivision of the agricultural system of the metropolitan country

Though infrastructure is sometimes expanded and improved with the creation of plantations in colonies, how do colonial administrations and companies deny access to things like roads, bridges, seeds, credit, pest and disease information etc. to the peasant farmers?

For cheap labor; make them dependent on plantation wages

How do we naturalize and romanticize the colonial process?

Forced peasants to replace food crops with cash crops that were then expropriated at very low rates; took over the best agricultural land for export crop plantations and then forced the most able-bodied workers to leave the village fields to work as salves or for very low wages on plantations; encouraged a dependence on imported food; blocked native peasant cash crop production from competing with cash crops produced by settlers or foreign firms

What were some of the specific cash crops that were grown in place of staple crops in Africa? Vietnam?

Gambia - peanuts; Northern Ghana - cocoa; Liberia - firestone tire and rubber; Nigeria - palm oil; Tanganyika - sisal; Uganda - cotton; Vietnam - rice

Why don't the authors view the hunger experienced by some as a conspiracy? What does the study of colonialism bring to the argument?

If these forces were entirely conspiratorial, they would be easier to detect and many more people would by now have risen up to resist. We are talking about something more subtle and insidious; a heritage of a colonial order in which people with the advantage of considerable power sought their own self-interest, often arrogantly believing they were actin in the interest of the people whose lives they were destroying

Were agricultural practices inferior in areas that now experience hunger?

No

Compare the indigenous and colonial style agricultural practices. What are some of the characteristics of each? Benefits? Problems?

Nowhere would one find better instances of keeping land scrupulously clean from weeds, of ingenuity in device of waterraising appliances of knowledge of soils and their capabilities, as well as of the exact time to sow and reap, as one would find in Indian agriculture. It is wonderful too, how much is known of rotation, the system of "mixed crops" and of fallowing ... I, at least, have never seen a more perfect picture of cultivation

How do colonial powers ensure the abandonment of the natural and adaptive drive to grow food in populations?

The first strategy was to use physical or economic force to get the local population to grow cash crops instead of food on their own plots and then turn the mover to the colonizer for export. The second strategy was the direct takeover of the land by large-scale plantations growing crops for export. Taxation was both an effective tool to "stimulate" cash cropping and a source of revenue that the colonial bureaucracy needed to enforce the system

What is the primary misconception about why some nations 'took off' economically while others struggle to provide food and other resources to their peoples?

The lagging behind of the majority of the world's peoples must be due to some internal deficiency or even to several of them; must be deficient in natural resources and cultural development

How did the creation of plantations by foreign investors and colonizing governments change the lifestyles of many peoples?

The peasants, in chronic need of ready cash for taxes and foreign consumer goods, were only too willing to lease their land to the foreign companies for very modest sums and under terms dictated by the firms. Where land was still held communally, the village headman was tempted by high cash commissions offered by plantation companies. He would lease the village land even more cheaply than would the individual peasant or, as was frequently the case, sellout the entire village to the company.

How do the colonial administrations ensure cheap labor?

To assure this labor supply, colonial administrations simply expropriated the land of the African communities by violence and drove the people into small reserves. With neither adequate land of their traditional slash-and-burn methods nor access to the means to make continuous farming of such limited areas viable, the indigenous population could scarcely meet subsistence needs, much less produce surplus to sell in order to cover the colonial taxes. Only by laboring on plantations and in the mines could they hope to pay the colonial taxes.

Why did 15,000 peasant workers die in Jamaica between 1780-1787?

due to famine