NB Some aspects of tis amazing intelligence story are disputed- eg was the intelligence opec sourced by Taiwan (Or Japan , or Korea) - what matters is the intel got shared
The story wasn't heard in USA until 2001 when Steve Jobs hosted Fazle Abed 65th birthday wish party -see 20 years of diary note aka abedmooc.com (made during abed's last 20 years on earth to Dec 2019). In 1972 friend Fazle Abed was responsible for a meta-village in bangladesh - 15000 village huts (100000 humans)- no electricity- dozens of moms starving to death each week, scores of infants dying of dehydration. Taiwan told him that if village mothers had best for their community rice seed they could each grow 10 times more- so ...
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one season 50 moms started experimenting with this; they grew 10 times more and now had food for many neighbors and positive cash flow to lend to another 50 moms and fazle started being asked to start replicating this;
what happened in 1976/7 is disputed - China had previously not let people run private business but - more at Economistdiary.com/1977
it chose 2 types; if taiwanese wanted to invest million of dollars in coastal city infrastructure that was good; if villagers wanted to start rice farming with Taiwans best seeds for particular localities that was good- hey presto village moms in both bangladesh and china built the rural nations on extremely small businesses but ones ending last mile starvation; now those who know the colonial histioy of how bangladesh started 8 most populous and with zero foreign exchange are happy that bangladesh happened around 1976 to invent the greatest cure of infant death ever in population numbers - oral rehydration; it was abeds communities that worked out how to train illiterate village moms to give infants boiled water sugar saltt mixed in good proportions to end death by diarrhea; UNICEF's james grant whose parents had been missionaries in china awarded abed the grand prize of the year of the child - unicef would fund abed to train every mother in 90% rural bangladesh if abed was happy that UNICEF explaned this solution to china's barefoot medics; china was so pleased that for the rest of the 20th century rural village 1biliongirls across bangladesh and china shared solution but not investments in each others community entrepreneurial businesses
in 2001 steve jobs hosted abed 65th birthday party in valley which was shocked to hear that the most human billion person network had been linked by word of mouth not any of the tech that jobs and gates had personal computer networked- so abed steve jobs and stanford students stated changing that- all thanks to Taiwan rice intel which in turn had even stared in Japan - see Economist case study 1971 or whichever of Borlaug alumni first extended his crop science from wheat to rice
