By Tim Anderson

Aid worldwide runs at more than $120 billion per year (World Bank 2011a), yet there is very little correlation between this expenditure and the often stated goal of poverty reduction. The failures of aid are legion. Yet this ‘development assistance’ has become a massive and semi- permanent global industry which in western countries is often erroneously equated with ‘development’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Aid programs, despite the stated good intentions, certainly deserve some critical scrutiny. 

"Seeds Blong Yumi”, is a 57 minute documentary that celebrates traditional food plants and the people that grow them and stresses the importance of maintaining traditional farming practices [see video tralier below].

Indigenous farmers around the world face increasing pressure from agribusiness corporations that push their low-diversity seed stock. Many of these varieties require costly inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

Forty-two years ago, in March 1968, Bobby Kennedy explained to Americans why they were wrong to judge progress through the prism of the US's gross domestic product, which made them slaves to consumption and the accumulation of material things. 

Exactly the same arguments apply equally well today in Papua New Guinea where we are constantly been told to judge the quality of our lives and our development progress through the prism of 'economic growth'. But economic growth does not reflect either what is really important or the daily reality of life in PNG for ordinary people.

Papua New Guinea is experiencing unprecedented economic growth and the foreign elite who are benefiting are telling us we should rejoice and that we have never had it so good. But rising prices, deteriorating services and increasing violence are all that most of us are enjoying right now. Economic growth and huge resource projects should not be our priority, people and agriculture should. And the people who tell us otherwise are just protecting their own interests as they steer the global economy, and our planet, towards the precipice.