# The Plumpy'nut Patent Debate **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 10, 2010, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plumpynut-patent-debate/535633 "2010-04-10T13:37:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2010, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plumpynut-patent-debate/535633/61 "2010-04-12T22:46:54Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > Not sure I buy that. If you ship food in from overseas, you’d still have to transport it over those same horrendous roads. But his point is that the overseas part of the shipping is, well, peanuts. Moving stuff from port in North America to port in Africa via bulk freighter or container ship costs very little, and is essentially irrelevant compared to in-country distribution costs. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plumpynut-patent-debate/535633/62 "2010-04-13T03:48:34Z")
> [@LIONsob](#): > > I understand the “give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish” argument, but do the millions of malnourshed people in this world have enough time to plant, cultivate and harvest local crops for processing before they die of starvation, and what about natural disasters like drought or famine where crops are planted and fail to grow. What part of “fish” don’t you understand? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2010, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plumpynut-patent-debate/535633/63 "2010-04-13T11:29:19Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > Not sure I buy that. If you ship food in from overseas, you’d still have to transport it over those same horrendous roads. Yes, you do. However Gorsnak correctly notes: > [@Gorsnak](#): > > But his point is that the overseas part of the shipping is, well, peanuts. Moving stuff from port in North America to port in Africa via bulk freighter or container ship costs very little, and is essentially irrelevant compared to in-country distribution costs. Further, shipping processed and packaged goods is typically cheaper than the raw peanuts (observation is subject to a million and one caveats), for reasons due to spoilage, highly inefficient in-country distribution /collection systems (on the hypothesis that one has to collect raw ag from the farmers and transport it to an in-country plant) and bandit-like behaviours on the part of the gendarmes supposedly ‘guarding’ the roads. Of course they are more organised and moderately less murderous and rapacious than “wild bandits” so that is a plus. Euro 20 for the route to the Captain of the Gendarmes and some dash along the way is nothing compared to a dead driver and a truck gone missing. Never mind that if one is sourcing the vitamins in-country or in-region, one is probably paying a moderately higher price for similar reasons, plus lack of economies of scale. Then one has to process it - likely in a less-than-magnificently efficient plant - and ship it out again, so you pay the price of bad infrastructure TWICE. There are good (well not ‘good’ but you get it) solid reasons why higher end foodstuffs and certain bulk goods are almost universally imported in Africa, and it isn’t ‘evil multinationals’ but rather the evils of catastrophic infrastructure and endemic corruption and rent seeking. The PlumpyNut lads stated objective I find interesting - **are they effectively living up to it is also interesting, but no one has demonstrated that.** Instead we’ve had a lot of self-satisfied, America-centric anti-patent ranting with pretty much fuck all for informed comment on either the Nutribusiness or the Patent law end. (and yeah, that includes me - although at least I can bring some real African business insight to counter-weight the Africa is a wasteland stuff). And on the posturing side, this type of comment is among the worst: [QUOTE] I may be a layman rather than a patent lawyer, but I have to come down firmly on the side of the notion that this is far too unspecific a description of the thing invented to deserve a patent.[/qupote] Of course the commentator knows fuck all about either the business or the law, but hey a quick naive read is all it takes to get to blithering on about elites: > [@](#): > > It may increasingly be happening that way, as economic elites have been allowed to hijack the lawmaking process in quite a number of areas, intellectual property quite definitely among them. Which is just substituting American obsessions for actual thinking. The type of patent the Plumpies hold is not some cutting edge patent (at least the EU one isn’t). They may be wrong on the patent (although I do note again that they did get an EU patent, and the EU is rather more conservative than the US on patents in general; and further one of the patent co-applicants was a Fr. state development research centre, not a hot-bed of crazy patent applications). They may not be living up to their objectives (or maybe they are). However, they are also not in a genuine monopoly position as there are indeed substitutes, although the aid people appear to find them not as “great.” Populist reaction that is ill-informed doesn’t seem to me an improvement over some “elite” control. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-plumpynut-patent-debate/535633.md?page=3)