[thaumasiotes]

"You should use wheat-growing techniques that do work for us, but don't work for you" isn't quite the same message as "you should grow wheat (using techniques that work equally well for us and for you) even though wheat is only economical for us because we have a lot of land and no people to farm it, whereas you have a lot of people but not so much land".

[iguy]

There are varying levels of communist madness, from "you must pursue this strategy, sub-optimal for conditions here" all the way to "you will stay in this barbed-wire pen until you all starve". In the 60s/70s Tanzania was further along this line than was Russia.

[iguy]

For downvoters (who perhaps don't like my swipe at commies): my point here is that not all of these were honest if misguided attempts to improve farm productivity.

Some, like in Ethiopia, were closer to ethnic cleansing -- deliberately moving people (esp from Tigray IIRC) who were violently unhappy with the government, to less fertile places where they didn't understand how to farm, especially with new crops to boot. But by claiming this was a modernisation scheme was excellent PR, people like those, and the resulting famine was seen primarily as a great tragedy, and brought in lots of aid money.