[Gareth321]

I wish it worked like this. We have decades of examples of aid projects where we provide the means to produce food - machinery, fertilisers, irrigation equipment, water boreholes, processing and refining equipment, etc. Most of them fail. All of these machines and processes require training. Often extensively. Good luck convincing any of the locals to dedicate the next year of their lives to learning how to drive a complex tractor and PTO. They know that the tractor will break down soon and the parts will never arrive to fix it. That is, of course, assuming the tractor isn't stolen by next week. Which it usually is. Even if all the stars aligned and they managed to produce food, that will be stolen too. Either by someone else or by them.

Gangs don't use the farm equipment. They steal it and sell it. They will steal any equipment they can and there is an unlimited appetite for equipment on the black market. Especially in China and Southeast Asia.

[AngryData]

I certainly agree that it isn't a cure-all, I just don't see how any other program could ever end the cycle without those things included, and that despite the current prevalence of such ideas and projects it probably still isn't enough. Machine technology is what separates total poverty in the modern era from atleast some semblance of prosperity.

One part of the problem could be sending them super cheap/crappy tools because it seems like a better value per dollar and also the constraints of total funding. Sometimes maybe getting ripped off by foreign suppliers because there is a LOT of really crappy steel out there disguised as tools and engines that are all but useless. But tractors and tools that break down that easily are a complete waste of money and time to people who will barely get to use them before they stop working and they likely are right that it is junk. We have the technology to make a tractor that is robust enough that you wouldn't expect any maintenance for years if not a decade and minimal even at that point. I definitely don't see many decent manual CNC machines and lathes or other machine tools getting sent over in numbers enough.

Of course a lot of this still ultimately comes down to cost which is not an easy issue to deal with.