Tag Archives: Agribusiness

Sweat Shops, GMOs and Neoliberal Fundamentalism: The Agroecological Alternative to Global Capitalism

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Global Research

Much of the argument in favour of GM agriculture involves little more than misrepresentations and un scrupulous attacks on those who express concerns about the technology and its impacts. These attacks are in part designed to whip up populist sentiment and denigrate critics so that corporate interests can secure further control over agriculture. They also serve to divert attention from the underlying issues pertaining to hunger and poverty and genuine solutions, as well as the self-interest of the pro-GMO lobby itself.

The very foundation of the GMO agritech sector is based on a fraud. The sector and the wider transnational agribusiness cartel to which it belongs have also successfully captured for their own interests many international and national bodies and policies, including the WTO, various trade deals, governments institutions and regulators. From fraud to duplicity, little wonder then the sector is ridden with fear and paranoia.

“They are scared to death,” says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and author of several books on food policy. She adds: “They have an industry to defend and are attacking in the hope that they’ll neutralize critics … It’s a paranoid industry and has been from the beginning.”

War against reason

Global corporations like Monsanto are waging an ideological war against not only critics but the public too. For instance, consider that the majority of the British public and the Canadian public have valid concerns about GM food and do not want them. However, the British government was found to have been secretly colluding with the industry and the Canadian government is attempting to soften up the public to try to get people to change their opinions.

Instead of respecting public opinion and serving the public interest by holding powerful corporations to account, officials seem more inclined to serve the interests of the sector, regardless of genuine concerns about GM that, despite what the industry would like to have believe, are grounded in facts and involve rational discourse.

Whether via the roll-out of GMOs or an associated chemical-intensive industrialised monocrop system of agriculture, the agritech/agribusiness sector wants to further expand its influence throughout the globe. Beneath the superficial façade of working in the interest of humanity, however, the sector is driven by a neoliberal fundamentalism which demands the entrenchment of capitalist agriculture via deregulation and the corporate control of seeds, land, fertilisers, water, pesticides and food processing.

If anything matters to the corporate agribusiness/agritech industry, contrary to the public image it tries to convey, it clearly has little to do with ‘choice’, ‘democracy’ or objective science. It has more to do with undermining and debasing these concepts and displacing existing systems of production: economies are “opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished” (Michel Chossudovsky in The Globalization of Poverty, p16).

Critics are highlighting not only how the industry has subverted and debased science and has infiltrated key public institutions and regulatory bodies, but they are also showing how trade and aid is used to subjugate regions and the most productive components of global agriculture – the small/peasant farmer – to the needs of powerful commercial entities.

Critics stab at the heart of neoliberalism

By doing this, critics stab hard at the heart such corporate interests and their neoliberal agenda.

According to Eric Holt-Giménez:

“The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Food Program, the Millennium Challenge, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and industrial giants like Yara Fertilizer, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, DuPont, and Monsanto, carefully avoid addressing the root causes of the food crisis. The ‘solutions’ they prescribe are rooted in the same policies and technologies that created the problem in the first place: increased food aid, de-regulated global trade in agricultural commodities, and more technological and genetic fixes. These measures only strengthen the corporate status quo controlling the world’s food… The future of our food-and fuel-systems are being decided de facto by unregulated global markets, financial speculators, and global monopolies.”

The geopolitics of food and agriculture has played a significant role in creating food-deficit regions. For instance, African agriculture has been reshaped on behalf of the interests described in the above extract. The Gates Foundation is currently spearheading the ambitions of corporate America and the scramble for Africa by global agribusiness. And in India, there has been an ongoing attempt to do the same: a project that is now reaching a critical phase as the motives of the state acting on behalf of private (foreign) capital are laid bare and the devastating effects on health, environment and social conditions are clear for all to see.

Any serious commitment to feeding the world sustainably and equitably must work to challenge a globalised system of capitalism that has produced structural inequality and poverty; a system which fuels the marginalisation of small-scale farms and their vitally important cropping systems and is responsible for the devastating impacts of food commodity speculation, land takeovers, rigged trade and an industrial system of agriculture.

And embedded within the system is a certain mentality. Whether it is the likes of Monsanto’s High Grant, Robb Fraley or Bill Gates, highly paid (multi-millionaire) white men with an ideological commitment to corporate power are trying to force a profitable but bogus model of food production on the world.

They do so while conveniently ignoring the effects of a system of capitalism that they so clearly promote and have financially profited from.

It is a capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India) whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable their model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill they seek to impose.

Genuine solutions: agroecology, decentralisation and localism

However, what really irks the corporate interests which fuel the current GMO/chemical-intensive industrialised model of agriculture is that critics are offering genuine alternatives and solutions. They advocate a shift towards more organic-based systems of agriculture, which includes providing support to small farms and an agroecology movement that is empowering to people politically, socially and economically.

This represents a challenge to all good neoliberal evangelists (and outright hypocrites) with a stake in corporate agriculture who rely on smears to attack those who advocate for such things.

To understand what agroecology involves, let us turn to Raj Patel:

“To understand what agro-ecology is, it helps first to understand why today’s agriculture is called “industrial.” Modern farming turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls; herbicides nuke anything green and unwanted—all to create an assembly line that spits out a single crop… Agro-ecology uses nature’s far more complex systems to do the same thing more efficiently and without the chemistry set. Nitrogen-fixing beans are grown instead of inorganic fertilizer; flowers are used to attract beneficial insects to manage pests; weeds are crowded out with more intensive planting. The result is a sophisticated polyculture—that is, it produces many crops simultaneously, instead of just one.”

And it works. Look no further than what Cuba has achieved and the successes outlined in this article. Indeed, much has been written about agroecology and its potential for radical social change, its successes and the challenges it faces (see this, this and this). And now there a major new book from Food First and Groundswell International: Fertile Ground: Scaling agroecology from the ground up.

Executive Director of Food First Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that agroecology offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – the prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics of a neoliberalism that drives a failing system (also see this and this) of GM/chemical-intensive industrial agriculture.

He adds that the scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs: the two-pronged process of neoliberal globalisation that has devastated the economies of the US and UK and which is displacing existing indigenous food production systems and undermining the rural infrastructure in places like India to produce a reserve army of cheap labour.

When you fail to understand capitalism and the central importance of agriculture, you fail to grasp many of the issues currently affecting humanity. At the same time, when you are part of the problem and fuel and benefit from it, you will do your best to attack and denigrate anything or anyone that challenges your interests.

The Globalisation of Bad Food and Poor Health: Sustainable Development or Sustainable Profits?

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: RINF

The proportion of deaths due to cancer around the world increased from 12 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2013. Globally, cancer is already the second-leading cause of death after cardiovascular diseases.

In India, government data indicates that cancer showed a 5 percent increase in prevalence between 2012 and 2014 with the number of new cases doubling between 1990 and 2013. The incidence of cancer for some major organs in India is the highest in the world. Reports have also drawn attention to rising rates of breast cancer in urban areas, and, in 2009, there was a reported increase in cancer rates in Tamil Nadu’s textile belt, possibly due to chemically contaminated water.

The increase in prevalence of diabetes is also worrying. By 2030, the number of diabetes patients in India is likely to rise to 101 million (World Health Organisation estimate). The number doubled to 63 million in 2013 from 32 million in 2000. Almost 8.2 percent of the adult male population in India has diabetes. The figure is 6.8 percent for women.

In India, almost 76,000 men and 52,000 women in the 30-69 age group died due to diabetes in 2015, according to the WHO. The organisation reports South-East Asia had a diabetic population of around 47 million, which is expected to reach 119 million by 2030.

A new study in The Lancet has found that India and China continue to have the largest number of underweight people in the world; however, both countries have broken into the top five in terms of obesity.

India leads the world in terms of underweight people. Some 102 million men and 101 million women are underweight, which makes the country home to over 40 percent of the global underweight population.

Contrast this with India’s surge in obesity. In 1975, the country had 0.4 million obese men or 1.3 percent of the global obese men’s population. In 2014, it was in fifth position globally with 9.8 million obese men or 3.7 percent of the global obese men’s population. Among women, India is globally ranked third, with 20 million obese women or 5.3 percent of global population.

Although almost half the nation’s under-5s are underweight, the prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world; at the same time, the country is fast becoming the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world.

Many social and economic factors, including environmental pollution, poor working and living conditions, tobacco smoking, lack of income and economic distress, lack of access to healthcare and poverty, contribute to ill health and disease. However, conditions like cardiovascular disease and obesity have among other things been linked to sedentary lifestyles and/or certain types of diet, not least modern Western-style convenience food (discussed later).

Western junk food aside, it will be shown that even when we have access to sufficient calorific intake or seemingly nutritious and wholesome traditional diets, there is little doubt that due to the processes involved in growing and processing the food we eat, diet can be a (major) contributory factor in causing certain conditions and illnesses.

The junk food revolution, ‘free’ trade and poor health

The impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Mexico and the subsequent flood of cheap US processed food into the country has adversely affected the health of ordinary people. Western ‘convenience’ (junk) food has displaced more traditional-based diets and is now readily available in every neighbourhood. Increasing rates of diabetes, obesity and other health issues have followed. This report by GRAIN describes how US agribusiness and retailers have captured the market south of the border and outlines the subsequent impact on the health of Mexican people.

In Europe, due to the ‘harmonisation’ of food regulatory standards, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could seriously impact the health of Europeans. Washington wants Europe to eliminate all restrictions on imports of food from the US and to adopt a US-style food supply regulatory regime, stripped of the precautionary principle. US corporations want to make it difficult for European consumers to identify whether what they’re eating is food that was produced using health-damaging practices that EU consumers are against, like GMOs, chlorine-washed chicken and meat from animals treated with growth hormone.

These types of trade agreements represent little more than economic plunder by transnational corporations. They use their massive political clout to author the texts of these agreements with the aim of eradicating all restrictions and regulations that would impede greater profits.

Western agribusiness, food processing companies and retail concerns are gaining wider entry into India and through various strategic trade deals are looking to gain a more significant footprint within the country. The Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the ongoing India-EU free trade agreement (like TTIP, both are secretive and largely authored by powerful corporations above the heads of ordinary people) talks have raised serious concerns about the stranglehold that transnational corporations could have on the agriculture and food sectors, including the subsequent impact on the livelihoods of hundreds of millions and not least the health of the public.

Western style fast-food outlets have already been soaring in number throughout the country. Pizza Hut now operates in 46 Indian cities with 181 restaurants and 132 home delivery locations, a 67 percent increase in the last five years). KFC is now in 73 cities with 296 restaurants, a 770 percent increase. McDonalds is in 61 Indian cities with 242 restaurants as compared to 126 restaurants five years back, a 92 percent increase). According to a study published in the Indian Journal of Applied Research, the Indian fast food market is growing at the rate of 30-35 percent per annum (see this).

Heart disease, liver damage, stroke, obesity and diabetes are just some of the diseases linked to diets revolving around fast-food. Frequent consumption of fast food has been associated with increased body mass index as well as higher intakes of fat, sodium, added sugars and sugar-sweetened beverages and lower intakes of fruits, vegetables, fibre and milk in children, adolescents and adults. Fast food also tends to have higher energy densities and poorer nutritional quality than foods prepared at home and in comparison with dietary recommendations (see this).

To further appreciate just how unhealthy even seemingly healthy food can be in well-stocked supermarkets, this report in The Guardian reveals the cocktails of additives, colourants and preservatives that the modern food industry adds to our food.

Moreover, in many regions across the globe industrialised factory farming has replaced traditional livestock agriculture. Animals are thrown together in cramped conditions to scale up production and maximise output at minimum cost. For example, just 40 years ago the Philippines’ entire population was fed on native eggs and chickens produced by family farmers. Now, most of those farmers are out of business. And because world trade rules encourage nations from imposing tariffs on subsidised imported products, they are forced to allow cheap, factory-farmed US meat into the country. These products are then sold at lower prices than domestic meat. There is therefore pressure for local producers to scale up and industrialise to compete.

Factory farms increase the risk of pathogens like E coli and salmonella that cause food-borne illness in people. Overuse of antibiotics can fuel the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the use of arsenic and growth hormones can increase the risk of cancer in people and crowded conditions can be a breeding ground for disease. And genetically modified animal feed is also a serious issue, leading to concerns about the impact on both animal and human health.

The green revolution, micronutrient deficient soil and human health

We often hear unsubstantiated claims about the green revolution having saved hundreds of millions of lives, but any short-term gains have been offset. This high-input petro-chemical paradigm helped the drive towards greater monocropping and has resulted in less diverse diets and less nutritious foods. Its long-term impact has led to soil degradation and mineral imbalances, which in turn have adversely affected human health (see this report on India by botanist Stuart Newton – p 9 onward).

Adding weight to this argument, the authors of this paper from the International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development state:

“Cropping systems promoted by the green revolution have increased the food production but also resulted in reduced food-crop diversity and decreased availability of micronutrients (Welch, 2002; Stein et al., 2007). Micronutrient malnutrition is causing increased rates of chronic diseases (cancer, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes and osteoporosis) in many developing nations; more than 3 billion people are directly affected by the micronutrient deficiencies (Cakmak et al., 1999; Welch, 2002; WHO, 2002; Welch and Graham, 2004). Unbalanced use of mineral fertilizers and a decrease in the use of organic manure are the main causes of the nutrient deficiency in the regions where the cropping intensity is high (Prasad, 1984; Welch, 1993, 2005).”

The authors imply that the link between micronutrient deficiency in soil and human nutrition is now regarded as crucial:

“Moreover, agricultural intensification requires an increased nutrient flow towards and greater uptake of nutrients by crops. Until now, micronutrient deficiency has mostly been addressed as a soil and, to a smaller extent, plant problem. Currently, it is being addressed as a human nutrition problem as well. Increasingly, soils and food systems are affected by micronutrients disorders, leading to reduced crop production and malnutrition and diseases in humans and plants (Welch et al., 1982; Welch and Graham, 2004). Conventionally, agriculture is taken as a food-production discipline and was considered a source of human nutrition; hence, in recent years many efforts (Rengel and Graham, 1995a, b; Cakmak et al., 1999; Frossard et al., 2000; Welch and Graham, 2005; Stein et al., 2007) have been made to improve the quality of food for the growing world population, particularly in the developing nations.”

Pesticides, the environment, food and health

Hand in hand with the practices outlined above has been the growth of the intensive use of chemical pesticides. There are currently 34,000 pesticides registered for use in the US. Drinking water is often contaminated by pesticides and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and several types of cancer. The association with pesticide exposure is becoming stronger with each new study.

In Punjab, pesticide run-offs into water sources have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘, and Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of green revolution ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

India is one of the world’s largest users of pesticides and a profitable market for the corporations that manufacture them. Ladyfinger, cabbage, tomato and cauliflower in particular may contain dangerously high levels because farmers tend to harvest them almost immediately after spraying. Fruit and vegetables are sprayed and tampered with to make them more colourful, and harmful fungicides are sprayed on fruit to ripen them in order to rush them off to market.

Consider that if you live in India, the next time you serve up a good old ‘wholesome’ meal of rice and various vegetables, you could be taking in half a milligram of pesticide also. That would be much more than what an average North American person would consume.

Research by the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering (SNSE) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore has indicated disturbing trends in the increased use of pesticide. In 2008, it reported that many crops for export had been rejected internationally due to high pesticide residues. Moreover, India is one of the largest users of World Health Organization (WHO) class 1A pesticides, including phorate, phosphorus, phosphamidon and fenthion that are extremely hazardous.

Kasargod in Kerala is notorious for the indiscriminate spraying of endosulfan. The government-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala aerially sprayed the harmful pesticide on cashews for a period of over 20 years. Consequently, it got into rivers, streams and drinking water. Families and their children have been living with physical deformities, cancers and disorders of the central nervous system ever since.

Officials and the pesticide companies benefited from the spraying. At the time, cashew was grown without pesticides throughout Kerala, but the government-run plantation invested millions of rupees of public money in spraying the deadly pesticide. Endosulfen poisoning cases also emerged elsewhere, including Karnataka.

The SNSE notes that pesticide use across India has greatly increased over the years. This not only impacts the health of consumers but also the health of agricultural workers who are subject to pesticide drift and spaying, especially as they tend to wear little or no protection. Research by SNSE shows farmers use a cocktail of pesticides and often use three to four times the recommended amounts (see this).

Forced-fed development: who benefits?

If there are any beneficiaries in all of this, it is the pesticide manufacturers, the healthcare sector, especially private clinics and drug companies, and the transnational food and agribusiness companies, which now see their main growth markets in Asia, Africa and South America, where traditionally people have tended to eat food from their own farms or markets that sell locally-produced foods.

Of course, the commodification and privatisation of seeds by corporate entities, the manufacturing and selling of more and more chemicals to spray on them, the opening up fast food outlets and the selling of pharmaceuticals or the expansion of private hospitals to address the health impacts of the modern junk food system (in India, the healthcare sector is projected to grow by 16 percent a year) all amounts to the holy grail of neoliberal capitalism, GDP growth; which increasingly means a system defined by jobless growth, greater personal and public debt and massive profits for large corporations and banks.

While there are calls for taxes on unhealthy food and emphasis is placed on encouraging individual ‘lifestyle changes’ and ‘healthy eating’, it would be better to call to account the corporations which profit from the growing and production of health-damaging food in the first place and to get agriculture off the chemical treadmill.

Part of the solution entails restoring degraded soils. It also includes moving towards healthier and more nutritious organic agriculture, encouraging localised rural and urban food economies that are shielded from the effects of rigged trade and international markets and shying away from the need for unhealthy food-processing practices, unnatural preservatives and harmful additives.

In India, it also involves calling a halt to the programmed dismantling of local rural economies and indigenous agriculture under the guise of ‘globalisation’ for the benefit of transnational agribusiness and food retail corporations. And it entails placing less emphasis on a headlong rush towards urbanisation (and the subsequent distortion of agricultural production), while putting greater emphasis on localisation.

 

Related Article:

8 Critical Factors Behind Every Food Crisis

 

 

The Mainstream Has Failed

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

The good news is there is a way to avoid failure and stagnation: avoid the mainstream like the plague.

The mainstream became mainstream because it worked: the mainstream advice to “go to college and you’ll get a good job” worked, the mainstream financial plan of buying a house to build equity to pass on to your children worked, the mainstream of government regulation worked to the public’s advantage at modest cost to taxpayers and the mainstream media, despite being cozy with government agencies such as the C.I.A. and operating as a profit machine for the families that owned the newspapers, radio stations, etc., functioned as a basically honest broker of information and reporting.

Now, the mainstream has failed. Mainstream career advice now leads to crushing debts and career stagnation, mainstream financial planning generates high risks, mainstream government regulations are costly and burdensome, and the mainstream media is little more than a corporate-owned mouthpiece of propaganda and distributor of infotainment that is sold as “news.”

Does anyone actually believe the mainstream political process isn’t broken? Those who claim it isn’t broken are either well-paid shills just doing their job or they’re delusional.

The mainstream American diet now leads to chronic disease and early death.Supersized portions, large amounts of sugar and/or salt in virtually every packaged food item, heavy doses of low-quality fats in almost all mainstream fast foods–these have become mainstream at a very high cost in diminished health and reduced years of life free of chronic disease and pain.

The mainstream level of fitness contributes to chronic disease and early death.The mainstream lifestyle is one in which people passively watch a few daredevils pursue extreme sports on a variety of digital screens, passively “consume” music rather than learning to play music themselves, passively consume “news” rather than being engaged in community activities that make news, and so on.

The mainstream healthcare system is structured so it is incapable of promoting health. As my longtime friend GFB recently asked, “Who is happy with the current healthcare system?” Certainly not the doctors and nurses or the patients. Perhaps Big Pharma is happy as a result of their enormous profits (more of which is spent on marketing the latest marginally useful and often dangerous drug than on R&D), but even Big Pharma has legitimate complaints about the cost and time required to get a potentially life-changing drug (such as immunotherapy drugs) through the pipeline.

But the real problem is the soaring costs of the system will eventually collapse the entire economy. The same can be said of the soaring costs of increasingly marginal higher education, the soaring costs of increasingly marginal weapons systems, and so on.

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The mainstream healthcare system is incapable of promoting health or restraining costs:

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The other problem with the mainstream is that any attempt to structurally reform these broken systems will trigger collapse. The mainstream systems are now so fragile that any significant change will cause them to implode. I explain why in my book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform.

The good news is there is a way to avoid failure and stagnation: avoid the mainstream like the plague. Stop eating packaged and fast foods, eat restaurant meals only occasionally, prepare 90% of your meals at home with real ingredients, including lots of fresh vegetables. Walk at least one mile/2 kilometers a day, start bicycling instead of driving (where possible), start doing yoga, tai chi, etc. every day, turn any 6-foot square floor area into your home gym–get lean.

Stop watching sports and start doing sports (appropriate to your age and climate, of course).

As for fashioning a sustainable career–don’t count on a college degree to work some sort of magic. I describe a more proactive approach to forging a sustainable career in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

Don’t accept “standards of care” that include addictive pain-killers and powerful meds that require another six meds with their own side-effects to counter the side-effects of the first med. Do you own research, get a second opinion. Discover what you can do to help heal yourself first.

Stop “consuming” mainstream media except in small, limited portions and consume even these portions with a skeptical eye and ear for propaganda and rigged numbers that supports failed mainstream narratives.

We are what we do every day. Step out of the mainstream and stay out of the mainstream and opportunities that are unavailable to those who passively accept the mainstream as “all there is” will emerge.

As Douglas MacArthur observed, “There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.”

If you’re interested in avoiding the mainstream of failure and stagnation, please consider these quotes drawn from my extensive list of Aphorisms:

“We are what we repeatedly do.” (Aristotle)

“Do the thing and you shall have the power.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” (E.F. Schumacher)

“He who will not risk cannot win.” (John Paul Jones)

Bayer and Monsanto: A Marriage Made in Hell

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By Steven MacMillan

Source: New Eastern Outlook

In a world infected with a plethora of immoral multinational corporations, it is hard to think of two corporations who have more nefarious histories than Bayer AG and Monsanto. Considering this, it is a harrowing prospect that the two corporations could potentially strike a deal in the near future.

As Bloomberg reported earlier this month, Bayer AG – the German pharmaceutical and chemical corporation – is reportedly considering a bid for the agrochemical and biotechnology corporation, Monsanto. This comes two months after Monsanto showed some interest in acquiring Bayer Crop Sciences, a branch of Bayer AG.

Founded in 1863, Bayer may be familiar to many readers as the first company to widely sell and trademark Aspirin in the late nineteenth century. But there is a far more sinister history to this company that is often omitted. 

The Inception of Chemical Warfare

April 22nd, 1915 is widely considered to be the first successful large-scale use of poison gas in warfare, when the Germany army deployed chlorine gas against the French lines at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres. In January of that year, German forces had released gas against Russian forces, yet the cold conditions inhibited the main agents in the weapon from having the desired impact.

Even as far back as the First World War, Bayer was playing a major role in the development of Germany’s chemical weapons apparatus. Along with other German chemical giants at the time, Bayer was a key player in producing and supplying the German army with chemical weapons during WWI (it should be noted that other powers were developing and deploying chemical weapons during the Great War, not just Germany). 

Bayer and the Nazi War Machine

Fast-forward a decade or so, and Bayer was playing an integral part in amalgamating numerous chemical companies into one. The merger resulted in the creation of the most infamous chemical company in modern history – I.G. Farben. As the late Anthony C. Sutton – a former Economics Professor at California State University and Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution – wrote in his book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler:

“The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies – Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer and Griesheim-Elektron. There companies were merged to become I.G. Farben. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I.G. cartel. Other I.G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I.G. Farben and the American directors of I.G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives… Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I.G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.”

In more modern times, a division of Bayer was accused of ‘knowingly’ selling HIV-contaminated blood products to haemophiliacs, and has paid millions in damages in legal settlements.

Brothers in Death

During the Vietnam War, Monsanto was contracted to produce and supply the US government with a malevolent chemical for military application. Along with other chemical corporations at the time such as Dow Chemical, Monsanto produced the military herbicide Agent Orange which contained high quantities of the deadly chemical Dioxin. Between 1961 and 1971, the US Army sprayed between 50 and 80 million litres of Agent Orange across Vietnamese jungles, forests and strategically advantageous positions.

It was deployed in order to destroy forests and fertile lands which provided cover and food for the opposing troops. The fallout was devastating, with Vietnam estimating that 400,000 people died or were maimed due to Agent Orange, as well as 500,000 children born with birth defects and up to two million people suffered from cancer and other diseases. Millions of US veterans were also exposed and many have developed similar illnesses. The consequences are still felt today, and will continue to be felt for decades to come; with cancer rates, birth defects and other diseases still causing devastation to the victims and their families.

And today, Monsanto is still involved in producing chemical poison. Last year, the World Health Organisations (WHO) cancer agency – the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – conducted a study on glyphosate, the main ingredient in the most widely used weedkiller in the world, Monsanto’s Roundup – which is heavily sprayed on GMO crops. The IARC study revealed that glyphosate was “classified as probablycarcinogenic to humans”.

Given the history of these corporations and the atrocities they have been complicit in, the last sector they should be involved in is the agricultural industry.

Related Podcast: Radio WhoWhatWhy – Monsanto’s 50 Years of Death From Above and Below Is About to End

Poisoned Agriculture: Depopulation and Human Extinction

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: RINF

There is a global depopulation agenda. The plan is to remove the ‘undesirables’, ‘the poor’ and others deemed to be ‘unworthy’ and a drain on finite resources. However, according to Rosemary Mason, the plan isn’t going to work because an anthropogenic mass extinction is already underway that will affect all life on the planet and both rich and poor alike. Humans will struggle to survive the phenomenon.

A new paper by Rosemary A Mason in the ‘Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry’, indicates that a ‘sixth extinction’ is under way (the Holocene extinction, sometimes called the Sixth Extinction, is a name describing the ongoing extinction of species during the present Holocene epoch – since around 10,000 BCE). In her paper, ‘The sixth mass extinction and chemicals in the environment: our environmental deficit is now beyond nature’s ability to regenerate’, she argues that loss of biodiversity is the most urgent of the environmental problems, as biodiversity is critical to ecosystem services and human health. And the main culprit is the modern chemical-intensive industrialised system of food and agriculture.

Mason asserts there is a growing threat from the release of hormone-disrupting chemicals that could even be shifting the human sex ratio and reducing sperm counts. An industrial agricultural revolution has created a technology-dependent global food system, but it has also created serious long-run vulnerabilities, especially in its dependence on stable climates, crop monocultures and industrially produced chemical inputs. In effect, farming is a principal source of global toxification and soil degradation.

Without significant pressure from the public demanding action, Mason argues there could little chance of changing course fast enough to forestall disaster. The ‘free’ market is driving the impending disaster and blind faith in corporate-backed technology will not save us. Indeed, such faith in this technology is actually killing us.

Since the late 1990s, US scientists have written in increasingly desperate tones regarding an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases, which have recently caused some of the most severe die-offs and extinctions ever witnessed in wild species and which are jeopardizing food security. Only one paper dared to mention pesticides as being a primary cause, however.

Mason cites a good deal of evidence to show how the widespread use on agricultural crops of the systemic neonicotinoid insecticides and the herbicide glyphosate, both of which cause immune suppression, make species vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens, driving large-scale wildlife extinctions, including essential pollinators.

Providing evidence to show how human disease patterns correlate remarkably well with the rate of glyphosate usage on corn, soy and wheat crops, which has increased due to ‘Roundup Ready’ crops, Mason goes on to present more sources to show how our over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture is causing irreparable harm to all beings on this planet. Most of these chemicals are known to cause illness, and they have likely been causing illnesses for many years. But until recently, the herbicides have never been sprayed directly on food crops and never in this massive quantity.

The depopulation agenda

Mason discusses how agriculture and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) fit into a wider agenda for depopulating the planet. She notes that on the initiative of Gates, in May 2009 some of the richest people in the US met at the home of Nurse, a British Nobel prize-winning biochemist and President (2003–10) of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, to discuss ways of tackling a ‘disastrous’ environmental, social and industrial threat of overpopulation. The meeting was hosted by David Rockefeller Jr. These same individuals have met several times since to develop a strategy in which population growth would be tackled.

The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) was involved in extensive financing of eugenics research by the National Socialists (Nazis) during and after World War and was in league with some of the US’s most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy élite families, such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics’, the systematic killing off of ‘undesired bloodlines’.

RF funded the earliest research on GMOs, which Mason regards as part of the depopulation agenda (of course, apart from the adverse health impacts of GMOs, Monsanto owns the ‘epicyte gene’ which causes sterility in males). The RF funded the earliest research on GMOs in the 1940s and effectively founded the science of molecular biology.

Mason cites Steven Druker to show the fraud behind GMOs and how governments and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs and the scientific research that casts doubt on their safety. Druker has shown that GMOs can have severe health impacts, which have been covered up.

The Royal Society is the preeminent scientific body within the UK that advises the government. It has misrepresented the facts about GMOs and has engaged in various highly dubious and deceptive tactics to promote the technology.

Druker wrote an open letter to RS as it has an obligation to the British public to provide a public response and ‘put the record straight’ on GMOs. Although Sir Paul Nurse’s presidency of Rockefeller University terminated in 2010, after he assumed the Royal Society presidency, Mason notes that Nurse is said to have maintained a laboratory on the Rockefeller campus and has an ongoing relationship with the university.

She asks: is that why Sir Paul was unable (or unwilling) even to discuss GMOs with Steven Druker? Was he sent to London by the Rockefeller Foundation to support the UK Government in their attempt to bring in GM crops? The UK Government and the GM industry have after all been shown to be working together to promote GM crops and foods, undermine consumer choice and ignore environmental harm.

Mason then goes on to discuss the impact of glyphosate residues (herbicide-tolerant GM crops are designed to work with glyphosate), which are found in the organs of animals, human urine and human breast milk as well as in the air and rivers. She documents its widespread use and contamination of soil and water and notes that the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer’s assessment of glyphosate being a 2A carcinogen (probably carcinogenic in humans) is unwelcome news for the agrochemical industry. She also notes that Roundup usage has led to a depletion of biodiversity and that loss of biodiversity is also correlated with neonicotinoids. However, despite the evidence, the blatant disregard concerning the use of these substances by regulatory agencies around the world is apparent.

To provide some insight into the impact on health of the chemical-intensive model of agriculture, Mason shows that in the US increases in Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, breast cancer, oesophageal cancer, congenital anomalies and a growing burden of disability, particularly from mental disorders are all acknowledged.

She claims that plans are under way to depopulate the planet’s seven million plus people to a more manageable level of between 500–2000 million by a combination of means, including the poisoning and contamination of the planet’s food and water supplies via chemical-intensive industrialised agriculture. Mason also notes that health-damaging GMOs are being made available to the masses (under the guise of ‘feeding the poor’), while elites are more prone to eat organic food.

We may be gone before planned depopulation takes hold

Although Mason cites evidence to show that a section of the US elite has a depopulation agenda, given the amount of poisons being pumped into the environment and into humans, the thrust of her argument is that we could all be extinct before this comes to fruition – both rich and poor alike.

In concluding, she states that the global pesticides industry has been allowed to dominate the regulatory agencies and have created chemicals of mass destruction that can no longer be controlled. She has some faith in systems biology coming to the fore and being able to understand the complexity of the whole organism as a system, rather than just studying its parts in a reductionist manner. But Mason believes that ultimately the public must place pressure on governments and hold agribusiness to account.

However, that in itself may not be enough.

It is correct to highlight the poisonous impacts of the Rockefeller-sponsored petrochemical ‘green revolution’. It has uprooted indigenous/traditional agriculture and local economies and has recast them in a model that suits global agribusiness. It is poisoning life and the environment, threatening food security across the globe and is unsustainable. The ‘green revolution’ was ultimately a tool of US foreign policy that has been used in conjunction with various institutions like the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation. GMOs represent more of the same.

In this respect, Mason follows the line of argument in William F Engdahl’s book ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation’, which locates the GM issue and the ‘green revolution’ firmly within the context of empire. Engdahl also sees the Rockefeller-Gates hand behind the great GMO project to a sinister eugenicist strategy of depopulation.

Mason’s concerns about depopulation therefore should not be dismissed, particularly given the record of the likes of the Gates and Rockefeller clans, the various covert sterility programmes that have been instituted by the US over the decades and the way agriculture has and continues to be used as a geopolitical tool to further the agendas of rich interests in the US.

To understand the processes that have led to modern farming and the role of entities like Monsanto, we must appreciate the geopolitics of food and agriculture, which benefits an increasingly integrated global cartel of finance, oil, military and agribusiness concerns. This cartel seeks to gain from war, debt bondage and the control of resources, regardless of any notions relating to food security, good health and nutrition, biodiversity, food democracy, etc.

Food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma notes the impacts in India:

“India is on fast track to bring agriculture under corporate control… Amending the existing laws on land acquisition, water resources, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and food processing, the government is in overdrive to usher in contract farming and encourage organized retail. This is exactly as per the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as the international financial institutes.”

In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘. Moreover, Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research reports that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

And now, there is an attempt to push GM food crops into India in a secretive, non-transparent manner that smacks of regulatory delinquency underpinned by corrupt practices, which suggests officials are working hand in glove with US agribusiness.

As smallholders the world over are being driven from their land and the GMO/chemical-industrial farming model takes over, the problems continue to mount.

The environment, the quality of our food and our health are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit and a type of looting based on something we can loosely regard as ‘capitalism’. The solution involves a shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture. But ultimately it entails what Daniel Maingi of Growth Partners for Africa says what we must do: “… take capitalism and business out of farming.”

It must also entail, according to Maingi, investing in  “… indigenous knowledge and agroecology, education and infrastructure and stand(ing) in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.”

In other words, both farmers and consumers must organise to challenge governments, corrupt regulatory bodies and big agribusiness at every available opportunity. If we don’t do this, what Mason outlines may come to pass.

 

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer : you can support his writing here.