News: Down on the farm (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down on the farm

Capitalism, when viewed from the perspective of human needs, is a crazy social system. We can have building workers unemployed whilst people go without decent housing and wonderful technological advances that could produce all the food, clothing and shelter needed for all of humanity in a clean, healthy environment – yet this technology is used to poison the rivers, lakes and oceans of tire world, because of the profit motive of capitalism. The latest piece of madness to emerge from the insane asylum that is capitalism is reported in the New Scientist online News:

“A Canadian farmer must pay Monsanto for the genetically modified crops found growing in his fields, even if the seeds blew there from neighbouring fields and he never intended to grow them in the first place, a federal court ruled last week. Basically, the judge is saying that it doesn’t matter how it got into your field, it’s Monsantos property. “But how does a farmer know if he’s got a genetically altered seed that belongs to Monsanto?” asks the farmer Percy Schmeiser of Bruno, Saskatchewan. The decision is an important one for Monsanto, which says it has to stop farmers stealing its property. Farmers in Canada and the US must sign agreements with Monsanto saying they will buy new GM seed each year instead of saving seeds new from the previous year’s harvest.”

What will the profit motive do with GM food?

Monsanto has made great play of how their disease resistant seeds would help to produce more food for the starving “Third World”. How wonderful it would all he for the farmers of Africa and Asia. However, they failed to highlight the contracts that US and Canadian farmers must sign about buying new seed each season. The same contracts would have to be signed in Africa and Asia. Every technological advance that human ingenuity devises is distorted by the profit motive.

From poverty to power (2008)

Book Review from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World by Duncan Green (Oxfam Publishing 2008)

Duncan Green defines an effective state as one that “can guarantee security and the rule of law,” and has an effective strategy “to ensure inclusive economic growth”. Such a state should be accountable to citizens and able to guarantee their rights. Active citizens are linked to the state by a “combination of rights and obligations”: making use of these rights to improve their conditions.

He argues that it is the combination of poor men and women and their national governments that provide the main actors in the fight against poverty and inequality. Case studies are given to illustrate how even the poorest people have by their organised and persistent actions brought about beneficent change in their circumstances. Like the Chiquitanos people of Bolivia who after 12 years of “unremitting and often frustrating struggle” won legal title to the 1m-hectare indigenous territory of Monteverde.

He is aware that the scales are weighted against the poor in all areas. For example, research is dominated by the private sector: in agriculture 5 large multinational corporations spend $7.3bn per year on agricultural research on high value, high profit products while the staple foods of poor communities are “likely to be overlooked.” In biotechnology the picture is the same with GM crops being genetically engineered to meet the needs of large scale farms. There is no serious investment in the five most important semi-arid and tropical crops.

Half of the world’s population lives in the countryside and the majority of people in absolute poverty live in the rural areas. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) sources are given for the claim that over the past 20 years aid donors and governments have effectively withdrawn from the countryside. Mention is made of the well known ‘structural development programmes’ which imposed a ‘radical free market’ on debtor countries.

Agricultural growth, Green argues, reduces poverty but is most effective when small farmers are able to capture a fair share of the benefits. Local farmers, he says, should be helped to improve the quality of their produce so that for example retail giants like McDonalds and Pizza Hut use local produce instead of importing produce from the USA. Here his ‘active’ citizens would be small farmers “organising their ability to negotiate a fair deal”. However when it comes to buying fertilizer or seeds, or selling produce or their labour, small producers are dominated by the large corporations. Small farmers are “de facto employees”.

In Green’s view efficient states should take the environment and the enhancement of the daily lives of the poor as prime considerations. Global governance (the “web of international institutions, laws regulations, and agreements”) could help, and the 8 main ways he lists include managing the global economy, redistributing wealth through aid or international taxation, averting health threats and avoiding war. However global governance fails to live up to its ideals. “The WTO is frozen, regional trade agreements are proliferating and introducing profoundly unfair trade and investment rules, the G8 is failing to keep its promises on aid…”, then there is the threat of climate change and “a looming financial crisis”.

The book is well sourced with a 24-page bibliography and three further pages listing background papers. There is much useful information covering more areas than can be dealt with in a review. However Duncan Green takes a moral stance whereas under capitalism the prime consideration cannot be the welfare of citizens active or otherwise, but sale and profit; this drives development (forget sustainable) – and can also inhibit it. And the state that in his view is supposed to facilitate change will only do so to the extent that the interests of the owning class are served.

Pat Deutz

Enough food for all (2020)

From the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Malnutrition is caused by “the lack of access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food” due to poverty’ (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation 2017).

Within the current political system planning ahead on whatever front, the main goal will be in some way or another connected to the financial aspect. Housing, for instance, is a major problem for millions around the world even though it is designated by a UN resolution as a basic human right. In ‘normal’ non-Covid times the UK, with less than one percent and the US, with less than five percent of the global population, both have significant numbers of people living rough on the streets or in hostels whilst more than enough housing remains empty but unavailable to them. On a global level we can only make estimates of the whole picture but there is no doubt that too many millions of people are without one of the basic necessities of life.

Even larger numbers of individuals struggle to get enough to eat, especially nutritious food that would help to keep them healthy and, in most cases, that is also linked to their financial situation. Whether the poor in faraway undeveloped places, both urban and rural, or the poor in supposedly more affluent Western countries, the divisions between haves and have-nots are there in plain sight. Another supposedly human right is not available to them.

Air, water, food and shelter. The four absolute necessities for humankind. Currently a minority has these in plenty but the majority, on a sliding scale, is limited on their access to clean air, enough clean water, sufficient, varied food and shelter suitable to their environment and family needs. Again, all these are limited by a person’s financial situation.

If we value our own being as an individual in this world then surely we recognise a similar value for each and every other human being? And wherever one lives in this world, urban or rural, all have these similar basic requirements.

Imagining removing the financial aspect from our lives is the key to discovering just how different all lives could be, how decision-making becomes inclusive and relevant for all, how this could free people up from a boring and hateful treadmill to creative and inclusive new ways of organising and planning. To be able to move ahead in a way which eliminates all the major negative facts and stress which face humanity right now, to confront them with the aim of protecting both people and planet for the long term.

Cash crops

There is enough food produced currently to feed the global population but much is lost as waste from homes, from shops and from storage facilities. Much food is kept off the market, in storage, to maintain price levels. It is a criminal act, to know that people are dying for lack of food and to deny them access for lack of money. There is food for all but all are not getting it, so something radical has to change to make that happen.

Food has long been a commodity, promoted non-stop in the media – but usually as a processed product rather than a fruit, vegetable, cereal crop, animal or fish. It is something bought in a supermarket in a package. In poorer areas of large towns and cities it has become common to see customers’ baskets filled only with these processed foods because it is cheaper to feed the family this way. Also it becomes more difficult to find fresh produce in these areas – most of the locals could not afford it anyway. Those living in large urban areas may not even have access to a market where fresh food can be found. The more up-market towns may have a ‘farmers market’ weekly or seasonally but the prices tend to be out of reach of many. Globally there are very many different local situations, however similar effects and results will be found according to the earning power of the customer.

The all-consuming hype of mega-corporations and mainstream media, which are paid to push their particular brands of food, is an obstacle that should be easy to overcome when there will be no profit from such advertisements. Associations, foundations, charities and the like will all become redundant when no one is without food or housing.

A current problem in large areas of the world is that of corporate takeover, removing huge populations from productive land in favour of growing crops for profit rather than crops for food. ‘The Green Revolution ‘of the 1960s and 70s which was heralded as the solution to world hunger is a good example of this. What happened over a period of a few years was that a new modified rice, supposedly more nutritious, was grown over huge areas in India, and other parts of Asia, the seed pressed on local farmers and grown by corporations as monocrops. In Asia – the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, there are thousands of varieties of rice and this vast area is considered as the most biodiverse in the world for vegetables, fruit, root crops and cereals. The new rice, as many other genetically modified crops, required large amounts of nitrogen fertilisers and irrigation. The change over some years was revealed by the huge rise in diabetes, the new white rice having a high glycaemic index, with 60 percent of global diabetes occurring in Asia. Plus increasing numbers of people had reduced access to a varied diet as a result of poverty.

Now in 2020 we find another move to push yet another rice as a supposed miracle crop:

‘Agrochemical transnationals (TNCs) and collaborating institutions such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) are using concerns over food security during the pandemic to push for an industrial agricultural system that is already discredited’ (theecologist.org/2020/aug/19/ golden-rice-trojan-horse).

The message needed to counter this increasing control of global food is that of the enormous diversity of crops, whether grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts or livestock – fish and meat – and the health benefits of food uncontaminated by chemicals of any kind. There is evidence that much of food production over the previous few decades is proving harmful to humans through allergies, obesity and downright slow poisoning. There are numerous court cases internationally pending from farm workers suffering serious illnesses from exposure to herbicides and pesticides; ongoing information related to corporations attempting to increase the spread of genetically modified crops against the will of many farmers and illegally in some countries.

One example, India, is covered in detail by Colin Todhunter at Countercurrents (bit.ly/3bEsoCc). Recently revealed are details of the revolving door between developers, patent-holders and regulators – nothing new there then. With regard to GM brinjal (aubergine) Bangladesh is now being targeted as both India and the Philippines have so far rejected it. Although India has officially accepted only one GM crop, cotton about 20 years ago, there are examples of other trials taking place without official approval.

Without the profit motive

Without the profit motive there could be no incentive to force these various changes and communities would be free to choose their own way when looking to the future. Wide-ranging discussions would take place between all stakeholders and experts as to the efficacy of trials and possible implementation. Certainly without the current global political system true democracy could at last raise its head and provide populations with the diversity of multiple food stuffs and do it in ways which don’t pollute our water and our soil, whilst also reducing the harmful gases emitted.

UN estimates for the next 30 years show a worldwide increase in the percentage of populations living in urban areas. For the UK it is projected to be 90 percent by 2050. No doubt this will be linked to work-related projections for the convenience and most profitable conditions for the capitalist system’s way of working. Now, during the Covid pandemic, there has been an increase in UK urban areas of applications for allotments – up by 300 percent in one area. When moving towards changing to a socialist system there are a number of positives from an increase in local crop cultivation. Gardens, rooftops, walls, underground spaces (there has been one for several years under Clapham High Street) are all being used for food crops. Most of these can benefit the urban environment from increased biodiversity with plenty of scope for improving environments whilst also being productive. There is a short but interesting article on this topic at https://bit.ly/3bFYIo9.

The system we are living in now is unsustainable. The top one percent of EU households have carbon footprints 22 times larger than climate targets allow. Only about 5 percent of EU households live within the required limits. A reduction per person of 2.5 tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 is required to reach this target. The EU average per person is 8 tonnes, the top one percent produce 55 tonnes. A global problem being given scant political attention.

According to James Hansen of Columbia University, regarding climate change, ‘the agonising efforts of scientists to avoid provoking accusations of alarmism have led to an innate optimism bias – sometimes leading to cautious underestimates.’

Until we can move away from the entrenched format of everything for profit there is little to no chance of changing the direction the planet is headed. Removing the capitalist approach to life is a better scenario for all global inhabitants, human and other. Then choices can and will be made for the benefit of all. What choice of food to be grown will be discussed and decided by people who have the right information. Releasing us from the many constraints of money will enhance lives positively. Our future choice of urban or rural living will be made freely, fulfilling personal goals. Looking ahead to the collective goal of socialism we acknowledge the vast diversity of cultures around the globe and the need to recognise and welcome all variations. After all we are just one small part of a vast, beautiful, ancient tapestry of human life. We don’t know just how all the myriad global communities will organise together but we are well aware that all the skills available will be welcomed far and wide. We need each other to protect our future generations’ well-being and whole environment.

Janet Surman

Material World: Why biodiversity matters (2023)

The Material World column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Biodiversity is vitally important to human society and human survival – not just the biodiversity of the wilderness but also the agrobiodiversity of domesticated plants and animals. One has to be constantly wary of the risk to such biodiversity posed by genetic erosion and species loss. These work to shrink the genetic pool – the natural variability of organisms – that breeders rely upon to select the kind of varieties they want to develop. That then reduces their room for manoeuvre. It makes agricultural output increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the emergence of new diseases or pests.

As José Esquinas-Alcázar notes:

‘The conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources goes far beyond avoiding the extinction of species. The objective must be to conserve and use as much diversity as possible within each species. Plant genetic resources can be conserved ex situ, for example in gene banks (facilities that store samples (accessions) of crop genetic diversity, usually as seed and vegetative material) or in situ, either on-farm for farmers’ varieties, or in natural reserves or protected areas for wild plants’. (‘Protecting crop genetic diversity for food security: political, ethical and technical challenges’, Nature Reviews/Genetics, Vol 6, December 2005).

‘In situ’ conservation is being threatened by the spread of a homogenising commercial agriculture both in the form of habitat destruction impacting on native species and varieties as the amount of land farmed expands and, also, via the aforementioned marginalisation of traditional farming practices that maintain diversity. But what of ‘ex situ’ conservation in the guise of gene banks?

This is a relatively cheap method of conservation but it has drawbacks:

‘The main drawback, however, is that a genetic resource ceases to evolve as the natural processes of selection and adaptation are halted. In addition, only a small amount of the genetic diversity present in a given population is usually represented in the collected sample. This is further reduced every time the resource is regenerated, owing to genetic drift and natural selective pressures under different environmental conditions. Furthermore, many gene banks do not meet appropriate standards of storage and regeneration, resulting in poor seed viability’.

Genetically modified seeds are not currently allowed (at the time of writing) to be stored in seed banks. One reason why this is so is because seed banks are subject to legislation contained in the International Plant Treaty whereby they are obliged to agree to multilateral access to their collections. This, in effect, means treating those collections as the common heritage of humanity. However, that is clearly at odds with the status of GM seeds as patented inventions deemed to be the private property of corporations that undertook the initial research. It is yet one more illustration of the way in which private property relations work to impede the effective use (and conservation) of resources at our disposal.

In their article entitled ‘Seed banks: the last line of defence against a threatening global food crisis’, Salome Gomez-Upegui and Rita Liu point out that there are about 1,700 seed banks around the world ‘housing collections of plant species that are invaluable for scientific research, education, species preservation and Indigenous cultures’. They cite Stefan Schmitz, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an organization dedicated to preserving crop diversity for food security:

‘At a first glance, seeds may not look like much, but within them lies the foundation of our future food and nutrition security, and the possibility for a world without hunger… Well-funded, well-maintained seed banks are critical to reducing the negative impact of the climate crisis on our agriculture globally’ (Guardian, 15 April 2022).

Without decrying the importance of seed banks for the future of farming it is surely overstating the case to suggest that the ‘possibility for a world without hunger’ depends on them. To reiterate – hunger is an economic and political problem; it does not arise from the lack of some kind of technical solution to growing more food.

This fixation with ‘technological fixes’ (at the expense of social fixes) fails to see that technology is not developed in a vacuum; it is shaped by powerful economic forces. A particularly perverse example of this is so-called ‘terminator technology’ – the development of seeds (dubbed ‘suicide seeds’) that are specifically designed to ‘genetically switch off a plant’s ability to germinate for a second time’ – thus compelling the farmer to buy in a fresh supply of seed each season (Link).

There is no rational technical reason for the development of such a technology; it seems to be solely designed for the purpose of securing increased profits for agribusiness. More to the point, it undermines the ability of traditional farmers to develop a range of local seeds adapted to local conditions as they have done in the past in time-honoured fashion.

Robin Cox

Links in the chains (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism enchains the vast majority of the world’s population, and the chains continue to get tighter. The question is how to bring this to the attention of the majority who haven’t yet grasped the enormity of the situation, and then how to address it to the benefit of this vast majority.

Transnational Investment Networks

‘The more complex the transnational investment networks become, the more intermediaries and jurisdictions there are, the harder it is to determine who is responsible for violations on the ground. Places sometimes are far away, hours by plane, boat and motorcycle cab – in the tropical forests on the banks of the Congo, the Sarawak and the Orinoco rivers – far away from the carpeted offices of The Hague and New York’s Fifth Avenue’ (bit.ly/3tg3jaD).

In reality these investment networks are enormous collaborations that are approaching almost complete control of international businesses and producers.

We can begin by taking a look at the numbers of the world’s major players in these investment companies alongside population figures across the world.

According to 2020 figures, of the top ten investment groups in the world, eight are based in the US, one in Switzerland (UBS Group) and one in Germany (Allianz). In global population percentage terms, the US represents 4.25 percent, Germany 1.07 percent and Switzerland 0.11 percent. The top three, Blackrock, Vanguard Group and Charles Schwab Corporation, all based in the US, hold 49.2 percent of global investments. Their various investment management ‘products’ consist of:

• Mutual funds
• Retirement income and college savings
• Exchange traded funds
• Asset management
• Stocks and shares
• Electronic trading

A vital point to be recognised is the massive ‘interconnectedness’ these companies have with major supply companies, including for food, which reveals just how tight their control over us as consumers is. This has happened gradually over time, with the majority being unaware of it, tightening the chains even further.

There are adverts for Vanguard and others on various TV channels featuring for instance ‘ordinary folk with pensions’ telling us how Vanguard have their – the people’s – best interests at heart. But look into who the majority shareholders are, and you find that they are, unsurprisingly, most of the wealthiest people in the world.

Tangled web

Food is vital to all humans every day – and the tangled web chaining us all includes food as a major element. Food is now overwhelmingly owned and controlled by major corporations which are also connected to the investment networks.

Attention has been focussed on the choices of food available, with often heated debate over meat consumption, vegetarianism and veganism, etc. However these are often just ‘surface’ chats which do not dive deep into the minutiae and possible problems at local and global levels. What needs more attention, especially following the recent and much-criticised COP26 summit, are the supposed changes needed, including reductions in emissions. And the debate needs rooting in a global perspective. The world comprises hugely different cultures and regions with diverse crops, animals and traditional foods. Perhaps the strongest focus needs to be on the important differences in health and local production in relation to organic and/or big-agriculture farming.

Last year’s demonstrations in India centred in Delhi where millions of farm owners and workers protested the government’s decision to instigate three new farm laws, which would put both land ownership and rented land at risk, with farm workers not being able to continue their chosen or inherited livelihood. Unlike most western (so-called developed) countries, the great majority of India’s working population work on the land in one way or another, and to be pushed out of the rural areas would mean living on the edges of hugely populated urban areas, searching for work that is simply unavailable. The demonstrations came to an end when the government agreed that they would repeal their decision, but the farmers are looking to restart protests as there has been no progress so far. The big agricultural companies seem to again be pushing to introduce genetically modified crops which, after some trials a number of years ago (on aubergines), were banned by the government and branded by farmers as another way of getting them off their land.

By far the farmers’ biggest grievance is continually crushing debt from seed, and chemicals including herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers, foisted on them by the international agricultural companies. Having to purchase all these items on credit, before the planting season begins, before knowing what weather-related problems to expect, or whether the sale price will cover their costs, has been a major reason for hundreds of thousands of farmers to commit suicide by drinking these same chemicals.

These international agricultural companies are also part of the investment groups mentioned above and have a growing presence globally. India is but one example. Farmers around the globe are being pressed into a system of corporate agriculture against their will and each year thousands of acres on all continents are lost to the giant agricultural corporations.

Healthy Food?

According to scientists at the Francis Crick Institute in London, the growing popularity of Western-style diets is a major reason why autoimmune diseases are rising across the world by about 3 percent – 9 percent a year. It seems that changes in our environment are increasing the predisposition to such diseases. The research team found that diets based on processed ingredients and lacking fresh vegetables can trigger autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune cases began to increase about 40 years ago in western countries and are now emerging in countries that never had these diseases before, diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, lupus, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis.

An estimated 4 million people in the UK currently suffer from these diseases.

The Western-style diet is one of highly processed and refined foods with high levels of sugar, salt and fat, and protein from red meat – a major contributor to metabolic disturbances and the development of obesity-related diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Biologists and others have long pointed to modern farming methods following the end of the Second World War as another factor in the growing health crisis. Three generations of industrialised farming have left land poisoned year after year by the use of toxic chemicals.

In 2014 the Corporate Europe Observatory released a report critical of the European Commission over the previous five years. The report concluded that the Commission had been a willing servant of a corporate agenda. It had sided with agribusiness on genetically modified organisms and pesticides. Far from shifting Europe to a more sustainable food and agriculture system, the opposite had happened, as agribusiness and its lobbyists had continued to dominate the Brussels scene. Consumers in Europe reject GM food but the Commission had made various attempts to meet the demands of the biotech sector to allow GMOs into Europe aided by giant food companies, such as Unilever and the lobby group FoodDrinkEurope. Democracy in action?

The facts are plain, but still the chains tighten. Food choices, especially for the global poor, are restricted year after year. The poorer you are, the poorer your choice of diet, from processed everything, and children not knowing what real food is, to cereals containing proven dangerous levels of Monsanto’s Roundup, and myriad nutritionally worthless snack foods, all reaping healthy profits for investors. Check out the supermarkets and the fast food chains in the lists of the investment companies and note that the money goes where the biggest returns can be made.

This is all about the power of money, the overwhelming power of a system that exists to channel as much money as possible into the pockets of the wealthiest. As Klaus Schwab announced recently at a World Economic Forum gathering, ‘You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy about it.’

Some of the business sectors to be found in the Transnational Investment Networks are: Big Tech (Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, etc. all in the hands of the same investment companies), food and agriculture industries, media of all kinds, pharmaceuticals, travel companies, airlines, booking agents, energy and mining, textiles, fashion brands, oil refineries, solar power companies, tobacco, cars, planes, and weapons.

Superficially companies and corporations appear to be in competition with each other while in reality, when digging below the surface, the major investors and the corporations themselves are cross-invested in their rivals. In this way the major investment holders hedge their risks and ensure their grip on the system.

Mission accomplished? Chains permanently locked? Looking at all of this from a socialist perspective where profits are not part of the equation, the matter is at least easier to grasp, if not solve.

Janet Surman

Voice From The Back: Suicides rise as yen falls (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Suicides rise as yen falls

As the Japanese economy enters recession with record unemployment since the war, the Japanese National Police Agency reports that suicides related to economic failure leaped by 18 percent last year. “Among the 3,556 who took their lives were three business partners who committed suicide together in a Tokyo hotel because of debt” Guardian, 13 June.

Controlling lives

Workfare, and welfare reform in general, offer a way to “break the culture of poverty and dependence” as Bill Clinton said during the 1992 presidential campaign. The idea is not merely to give those on welfare the dignity of earning their way. The hope is that once work is required, those not on welfare will avoid making the decisions – like having children out of wedlock – that might put them on welfare. New York Times, 5 May.

The alchemists

A fortnight ago, consultants acting for Monsanto, the biotechnology company whose recent merger will make it one of the largest corporations on earth, wrote to some of Africa’s most prominent academics and politicians, inviting them to sign a stirring public statement called “Let the Harvest Begin” . . . 

Monsanto’s suggestion that the continent’s freedom from famine depends upon its technologies would be hilarious if it were not so sinister. For Monsanto’s operations can now be numbered among the hungry continent’s greatest threats. The leading edge of Monsanto’s new work is not the production of food, but the production of feed; crops, in other words, grown not for humans but for animals. Last month the company announced a joint venture with the gigantic multinational grain merchant Cargill, to produce and market the seeds of genetically engineered fodder plants, particularly maize . . . Feed production is a growing component of Third World agriculture, supplying the ever-increasing consumption of meat, eggs and dairy produce in the First World. It is also one of the engines of African Famine, as land previously devoted to meeting local people’s necessities has been expropriated to supply the rich worlds luxuries … But this is the least of the ways in which Monsanto threatens Africa. Three months ago, American Delta and Pine Land Company patented a remarkable technology. Its “Terminator” gene ensures that the plants which contain it produce only sterile seeds: farmers planting these crops, in other words, will be forced to buy new stock every year. The new technology’s “primary targets” are, according to the original patent holders, “Second and Third World” countries. Four weeks ago, Monsanto bought the company… Monsanto, in other words, threatens to become the hunger merchant of the third millennium. Guardian, 4 June.

We all agree—don’t we

SAN DIEGO—A high-school sophomore who objects to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is fighting for the right to sit quietly during the daily exercise in patriotism. “Until a few months ago, I stood and faced the flag with my hands over my heart and mechanically said the Pledge of Allegiance” Mary Kait Durkee said Friday. “But I thought about what the pledge actually meant and I disagreed with its message,” She said she doesn’t believe in God, thinks the US government is corrupt and that American society is too violent, so she shouldn’t have to show respect for a country that has so many problems. For the ensuing three weeks, Durkee sat silently in her seat during the pledge. On April 25, she was notified she had to serve four hours of detention and stand during the salute. Seattle Times, 3 I May.

With a whimper

With only 562 days to go until the millennium, fearful Americans are heading for the hills armed with the four Gs of survival – God, guns, gold and groceries . . Gary North, a Christian economist [!] and Y2K preacher, predicts martial law will be declared by 15 january 2000. “I think there will be a collapse of Western civilisation if the power grid goes down.” Observer, l4 june.

What took you so long?

Early this summer, I enjoyed a weekend at the Long Island home of a college friend – a highly intelligent and levelheaded Englishman whose career has taken him (by way of the upper echelons of the British Civil Service and a financial firm in the City of London) to a big Wall Street investment bank. There he has spent the last few years organizing stock issues and helping his firm milk the strongest market in living memory. Between dips in his pool, we discussed the economy and speculated about how long the current financial boom would last.To my surprise, he brought up Karl Marx. “The longer I spend on Wall Street, the more I am convinced that Marx was right” he said. I assumed he was joking. “There is a Nobel Prize waiting for the economist who resurrects Marx and puts it all together in a coherent model” he continued quite seriously. “I am absolutely convinced that Marx’s approach is the best way to look at capitalism.” New Yorker, October 1997.

We can feed the world (2021)

From the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack Kloppenburg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that hi-tech agriculture is frequently justified by the rationalisation that it will feed the world. Kloppenburg says that is the wrong approach.

‘People need to feed themselves — they need to be allowed to feed themselves’ (Link).

We should concentrate attention upon the economics which drives agriculture and the food industry rather than disproportionately focus upon specific technologies and techniques.

The farming industry rarely asks ‘What do we grow that is best for the land?’ or ‘What can we grow that will benefit our community the most?’ or ‘What crop will be most nutritious and damage the land the least?’ Those are not questions that the food corporations ask. Instead they usually have just one question, ‘How much money can be made out of the land?’

The Malthusian overpopulationists gained popularity with the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (propped up by Garret Hardin’s later ‘Tragedy of the Commons’) which claimed that the world population was exploding and food production would fail to keep up with the numbers of people.

It led to what is known as the Green Revolution, and it is a policy still being emulated in modern times by the Bill Gates Foundation. What it did was basically to take fertilisers and pesticides, an integral part of intensified industrial farming methods, and transfer the practices elsewhere to increase production. Today Gates and the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa have joined various corporations such as Monsanto, manufacturers of the Round-Up herbicide, to introduce genetically modified crops with the same end of increasing harvest yields.

However, such pessimistic predictions did not materialise because the rate of population growth dropped. The world population no longer is expected to reach the earlier projection of 12 billion. Now the estimate is 9 billion or even 8 billion and the world already is well able to supply sufficient food if wastage is reduced.

Sweet-sounding statements from government ministries are frequently rendered meaningless by businesses bent on maintaining their expansion and growth. Capitalist accumulation is limitless. The purpose of capitalism is endless expansion of production for profits and an ecological nightmare has arisen from irrational, unplanned, undemocratic production, rather than a rational, democratically planned economy. Capitalism will poison and pollute the planet beyond recovery if it is not replaced.

Spurred by UN population projections and its calculation of the degree that food production has to increase, ie that the world must produce 70 percent more food by the year 2050 through yield growth to feed the expected rise in population, many commentators determined that the world needed to upgrade its farming methods with innovations such as genetically modified seeds and foods. We are told that the agribusiness corporations manufacturing fertilisers and pesticides, and the food processing companies, are the only sector capable of feeding the planet’s population and that family-owned, small farms are not equipped to do so. The food industry has no motivation other than to derive more profits from the food chain. Corporations expend a huge budget on public relations in defence of their business plans.

Yet there is no global or regional shortage of food other than some localised supply deficiencies caused by armed conflicts or temporary pest problems like, for example, a locust plague. Many countries are net food exporters. Wherever we look, farmers are already producing a surplus. There is no food scarcity. Food security could be provided for all people, all the time. Currently substantial crop harvests go to bio-fuels to drive vehicles. Crops that could fill the empty bellies of the hungry are diverted to fill fuel tanks or to fatten up cows and pigs. A 2013 estimate is that 4 billion additional people could be fed if animals were absent from the global feed chain, and that figure excludes nomadic pastoral livestock rearing, which often takes place on marginal land less suitable to arable farming and could easily continue to be practised.

Then there are plantations growing cash crops such as palm oil, coffee and tea. Cut flowers are a major export of Kenya’s horticulture. These may bring in valuable foreign currency for local elites but has very limited ability to feed the local people. World agriculture possesses the possibility to substitute non-edible crops for nutritious sustenance but Big Ag chases the stock market as well as the food market and states assist by providing generous financial and tax subsidies to it.

We cannot lay out any detailed alternative but we can broadly predict that in socialism the people would likely adopt a more flexitarian diet, supplied by the use of mixed cropping, agro-ecological production systems, and conservation agriculture, using more appropriate soil and watering procedures and requiring much less chemical input. A method called the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has the potential to feed a further seven billion if universally applied.

The World Socialist Movement long ago determined that increasing production does not solve hunger as it is not a technological issue but a political and economic problem.

An editorial in Journal of Sustainable Agriculture agrees:

‘Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity…the world produces more than 1 1/2 times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s already enough to feed 10 billion people, the world’s 2050 projected population peak. But the people… cannot afford to buy this food…The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people’ (Link).

In anticipation of more people living on the planet, we already have the knowledge and skills to feed those extra mouths. Socialism will exercise these to provide sufficient nourishment and end scarcity whereas it is in capitalism’s interest to maintain malnutrition and food shortages to keep prices up.

ALJO

We Want Real Food (2006)

Book Review from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We Want Real Food’. By Graham Harvey, (Constable £9.99)

Criticisms of food production usually concentrate on the supermarkets: with their emphasis on selling homogeneous produce and driving down the prices they pay to the producers, they play a major role in depriving consumers of healthy and tasty food. The fast-food industry is also attacked for its bland tasteless pap. In this book, though, Graham Harvey points the finger of blame at the companies that produce artificial fertilisers.

It is true that life expectancy is far greater than it used to be and that diseases like TB and cholera are almost things of the past in Britain. But degenerative diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis are reaching epidemic proportions. Harvey ascribes this to a change in the make-up of the soil, owing to the increased use of nitrogen compounds in fertiliser, which itself has been pushed by the companies who make big profits from selling the stuff.

Traditional farming exploited the minerals in the soil that contributed to a healthy lifestyle, but modern methods have relied more and more on chemical fertilisers that destroy these nutrients. According to one study, for instance, carrots lost 75 percent of their magnesium and copper between 1941 and 1990.

Minerals have various roles in protecting and promoting human health: copper, for instance, is important for the functioning of the liver, brain and muscles, while selenium protects against the onset of a number of kinds of cancer.

Harvey’s solution is a programme to reintroduce these crucial minerals to the soil. But this will face a problem: “For the best part of half a century, the chemical industry has effectively vetoed every attempt to remineralize over-worked soils and restore the health benefits to everyday foods.” So “What’s needed is leadership – from farmers, retailers or politicians.” Effective government legislation could supposedly promote sensible agriculture and hence healthier and tastier food. But food production would still be at the mercy of the profit motive rather than be aimed at satisfying human need.

Assuming that Harvey’s science is on the right lines, he makes a convincing case for changing the way in which agriculture is organised, but the problem is that this cannot be divorced from how society as a whole is run. His website at http://www.wewantrealfood.co.uk/ is also of interest, though we wouldn’t recommend bothering to write to supermarkets asking them to change their ways.

Paul Bennett

Marketing the suicide seed (2005)

From the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the second week of February the United Nations convened a meeting in Bangkok that, despite its importance, failed to make newspaper headlines or feature anywhere in news broadcasts. The lack of apparent newsworthiness, however, belies the meeting’s significance, for in time the issue under discussion could well turn out to have profound consequences for the world’s food supply.

At this meeting the Canadian government attempted to overturn the 1998 international moratorium on the commercialisation of ‘sterile gene technology.’  The Canadian delegation, acting on behalf of the multinational seed companies as well as the US government – not a party to the UN Biodiversity Convention – fiercely attacked a UN report which urged governments throughout the world to ban this particularly nasty branch of GM technology. A reversal of the current moratorium would permit the unleashing of what is known as the Terminator seed with devastating consequences to farmers, particularly in the undeveloped world.

So why should this issue cause so much concern? The US Department of Agriculture first developed Terminator technology in conjunction with multinational seed corporations in the late 1990s. The primary inventor of this technology, Melvin J. Oliver of the United States Department of Agriculture, explained: “Our mission is to protect US agriculture and to make us competitive in the face of foreign competition. Without this, there is no way of protecting the patented seed technology” (www.earthisland.org). The avowed aim was to protect the investment in the production of superior genetically modified seeds. It gave scientists the ability to modify plants that would produce seeds that grow to maturity but would be incapable of germinating if planted. Put simply, this means that while farmers will get a good crop in the first year of sowing, if they try to save harvested seed for planting in the following year the crop will be sterile, hence the name ‘Terminator’.

When the discovery was made public in 1998 it provoked global condemnation, particularly from Asian and African countries and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was compelled to impose a moratorium on its further development. To all intents and purposes, the issue seemed closed, although this did not deter the seed corporations from continuing their research and registering patent rights over areas of this technology.

Better than patents

Commercialising Terminator would have a devastating impact on an estimated 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest farmers who depend on ‘saved seeds’ and who exchange seed to develop new varieties suited to their growing conditions as a primary source of seed stock, and hence food. In practice genetically modified Terminator seeds will be neither affordable nor relevant to the needs of farmers in the undeveloped world. Terminator or ‘suicide seeds’ have been developed to prevent the successful sowing of ‘saved seeds,’ with a view to forcing farmers to purchase new seed every year and making them reliant on the seed market dominated by the gene corporations. As a means of controlling seed usage this biological solution is more permanent and infinitely more effective than patent or legal restrictions that seek to deny farmers the right to raise their own seed bank. In short Terminator has been  developed solely to maximise the profits of the seed industry.

Half of the world’s population cannot afford to buy new seed every year and typically depend on ‘saved seed’ and their skills to adapt a blend of varieties to suit growing conditions. Reversing the moratorium would enable the profit-seeking seed industry to enter completely “new sectors of the seed market — especially in self-pollinating seeds such as wheat, rice, cotton, soybeans, oats and sorghum” (www.earthisland.org). Until recently agribusiness had paid scant regard to crops grown in undeveloped countries, mainly because the industry had been unable to control seed reproduction. Those advocating sterile gene technology claim it could be a boon to undeveloped countries because the corporations that have developed new and better seed would then have the means of protecting their investment and could concentrate on the development of seeds suited to undeveloped countries, hitherto ignored, without having this investment undermined.

There can be little doubt that if Terminator is brought to market the logic of profit will mean the multinational seed corporations will seek to introduce genetic seed sterility into all genetically modified seeds offered for sale. Within a short time this could mean that the world’s two most important food crops – wheat and rice, on which three-quarters of the world’s poorest people depend – would come under the control of the seed monopolies. The notes to the first Terminator patent lodged by Delta and Pine Land explained that the company intended to make its technology widely available to competitors, but this was so as to penetrate the market with Terminator seed as quickly as possible and across as many varieties of crops as is feasible.  

Investment follows profits and if the staple crops of the undeveloped countries can be ‘tied up’ by Terminator, investment will pour into the seed corporations commercially producing seed where market sales can be guaranteed year on year. It can be no coincidence that the agricultural chemical corporations including DuPont, Dow Corning, Novartis, AgroEvo, and Monsanto have acquired major interests in the seed breeding industry where the ten largest corporations control 40 percent of the global seed market.

Not surprising

The UN Bangkok meeting did not, however, conclude in the way the seed corporations had expected. Governments nurturing GM industries not as advanced as those of the US and Canada intervened to thwart the intentions of Canadian government and the multinational corporations. We should not be surprised by the stance of the Canadian government because it is the role of governments to act in the interest of the class who live by profit and it is only doing what is wanted by its masters. But even though the de facto moratorium remains intact the Terminator issue is still on the negotiating table. It will be discussed at the next UN Convention of Biodiversity in March 2006 and the meeting of the G8 in Scotland later this year and every other opportunity thereafter. The multinationals smell blood and have moved up a gear to bring the ‘suicide seed’ to market.

It is unimaginable that in any sane society scientists in GM technology would wish to identify and develop a terminator gene – only a society motivated by profit could consider this worthwhile with no other conceivable purpose than to boost profits to those who sell it. But this is capitalism.

It is often claimed that science is neutral – being neither good nor bad. This is an abstraction that ignores the social relations, the social context in which science develops and fails to address the question – ‘who benefits’? Technology is almost always directed to the maximisation of profit and frequently has a detrimental impact on the environment or human well-being. With the pool of scientific knowledge reputedly doubling every twelve months people tend to be intimidated by ‘science,’ with no choice but to place reliance on so-called ‘experts’ who generally conceal a vested interest when urging a particular development. The real decisions that influence the world are made in secret and because we live in a society where the interests of the class that own the corporations and companies reign supreme, maximising profits will always head the agenda.

The prudent application of GM technology could be of some benefit to humanity and may be developed in socialism where food will be produced simply to feed people and not for profit. But like so many other scientific developments, the emergence of Terminator demonstrates that certain areas of science can become extremely dangerous when left in the hands of those whose only motivation is profit. In capitalism profit will always prevail over human need and research will normally be funded only into areas where profit can be maximised – regardless of the consequences on human welfare and the planet on which we depend.

Steve Trott

When Profit Is All (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Urban-Rural Imbalance?

Current global facts and figures on the urban-rural divide reveal disturbing numbers of people in both urban and rural locations living in desperate situations. The capitalist agenda is to profit from whatever scheme is dreamed up and implemented without regard for the externalities which, in this case, are people. There are plans being implemented around the world to remove millions of individuals from millions of acres of productive farmland, to empty the land of people in favour of huge agribusiness projects which can reap significant profits for corporations from mono-crops using vastly reduced labour numbers and, therefore, costs.

The typical plan is to move those uprooted into, or more often to the edge of, ever-expanding towns and cities as cheap labour. The plan may work well for the owners, the companies and their shareholders, but what of the disenfranchised, the millions uprooted and forced into unknown environments where they have no useful skills, how well does it work for them? They are being forced there ostensibly to work in construction, manufacturing and the service sector but it has become obvious that there is a huge insufficiency of employment available for the massive numbers and consequently millions of those displaced live in abject poverty.

This is exactly what the World Bank had directed India to do in 1996. It wanted India to move 400 million people from rural to urban areas by 2015. These are ‘agricultural refugees’ swarming into the cities looking for menial jobs. It is primarily through this decision that over the years, in addition to more or less static farm incomes, public sector investments in agriculture were also kept low, hovering between 0.3 to 0.5 percent of GDP during the period 2011 to 2017. Total investments, both public and private, have also been declining steadily – from 3.1 percent of GDP in 2011-12 to 2.2 percent in 2016-17. Compare this with the tax concessions being given to industry, which is in the region of 5 percent of GDP. Agriculture, which employs 50 percent of the country’s population, has simply been starved of public sector investments in order to achieve the desired results.

The Indian Congress has now admitted that direct income support is urgently required to lift the poorest of the poor from abject poverty, these poorest being a large proportion of small and marginal farmers. The Economic Survey 2016 revealed the average income of farming families in 17 states of India, approximately half the country, is about £220 per annum, less than £20 per month (for perspective this is similar to the amount granted to defence service employees and also to officers of the Supreme Court as their laundry allowance). For some international comparison, average domestic support per farmer, country by country: US $60,586, Canada $16,562, Japan $10,149, EU $6,762, China $863, Brazil $345, India $227.

With regard to India as one example, a quote from a British colonial administrator, Lord Metcalfe, in 1830, is illustrative: ‘Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down but the village community remains the same. It is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence’. His idea was that to control India the British would need to undermine this independence of the rural majority – which they did. And following independence India’s subsequent leaders continued on this path of control and subservience through several generations to the present. The current Prime Minister Modi has announced that India is one of the most ‘business friendly’ countries in the world (India is now in compliance with World Bank directives on ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’). When we see terms like these we are looking at capitalist-framed initiatives and minimal research shows that both of these directives promote environment-destroying policies, have little regard for local populations, and are based on global free market principles.

Many environmentalists from around the world will be aware of the horrifying numbers of farmers’ deaths in India from suicide, something in the region of 400,000 over the recent 20 years – 20,000 every year. The most significant reason being overwhelming debt. And, in fact, the government declined to publish the number of deaths for the last two years.

In addition to the numbers of farmers being displaced, in April of this year international environmental organisations appealed to India’s Supreme Court and UN organisations to prevent forced evictions of millions of Indian’s forest dwellers from their traditional, ancestral lands.

Health or Wealth?

Farming worldwide has, especially in the last four decades, become more and more of a burden for individual farmers around the globe, who are always under pressure for reasons out of their control. Studies on the harm done to the environment and the contamination of water, earth and consequently food – are these to be ignored too because profit comes first?

As new studies continue to point to a direct link between the widely-used glyphosate herbicide and various forms of cancer, the agribusiness lobby fights relentlessly to ignore or discredit evidence of damage to humans and other entities. Bayer AG, which now owns Monsanto, is currently facing something in the order of 11,000 cases in US courts brought by individuals claiming serious health effects from exposure to the chemical glyphosate found in the herbicide Roundup. Several recent cases have found in favour of the plaintiffs who have been awarded millions and even billions of dollars in compensation.

In a long-term animal study several years ago by a French team headed by Eric Seralini it was demonstrated that even ultra-low levels of glyphosate herbicides cause non-alcoholic liver disease. The levels rats were exposed to, per kg of body weight, were far lower than what is allowed in the US food supply. According to the Mayo Clinic currently, after four decades or more of pervasive use of glyphosate, 100 million – one in three Americans – now have liver disease. These diagnoses are in some individuals as young as 8 years old.

“The jury saw for themselves internal company documents demonstrating that, from day one, Monsanto has never had any interest in finding out whether Roundup is safe,” an attorney for the couple, R. Brent Wisner, said in a statement sent to CBS News. “Instead of investing in sound science, they invested millions in attacking science that threatened their business agenda.” Source: CBS News link

While most attention is understandably drawn to the human effects of exposure to glyphosate, the most widely-used agriculture chemical in the world today, independent scientists are beginning to look at another alarming effect of the agrochemical– its effect on essential soil nutrients. In a study of the health of soils in the EU, the online journal Politico.eu found that the effects of spraying glyphosate on the major crops in European agriculture is having disastrous consequences on soil health.

Scientists at Austria’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna showed that casting activity of earthworms had nearly disappeared from the surface of farmland within three weeks of glyphosate application. Casting, being the process of worms pushing fertile soils to the surface as they burrow, is vital for healthy soil and plant nutrition. A study at Holland’s Wageningen University of topsoil samples from more than 300 soil sites across the EU found that 83 percent of the soils contained one or more pesticide residues. Evidence of soil experts is increasingly revealing clear links between the use of pesticides such as glyphosate and dramatic drops in soil fertility and the collapse of microbe systems essential to healthy soil. Worms are one of the most essential. It’s well-established that earthworms play a vital role in healthy soil nutrients. Soils lacking these are soils that deprive us of the essentials we need for healthy diets. This is a pandemic problem of soil depletion emerging globally over the past four decades, notably the same time frame that use of pesticides and herbicides has exploded worldwide. Earthworms are beneficial as they enhance soil nutrient cycling and enhance other beneficial soil micro-organisms, and the concentration of large quantities of nutrients easily assimilated by plants. In addition to its effects on earthworms it has also been established that glyphosate can kill specific fungi and bacteria that plants need to suck up nutrients.

While average yields of major grains such as rice, wheat and maize have more than doubled since 1960, the use of glyphosate-based herbicides has risen 15-20 fold. Glyphosate is the base chemical component for some 750 different brands of herbicide worldwide in addition to Monsanto-Bayer’s Roundup. Glyphosate residues have been found in tap water, orange juice, children’s urine, breast milk, snacks, beer, wine, cereals, eggs, oatmeal, wheat products, and most conventional foods tested. Since the Monsanto Roundup patent expired it is clear that regulatory bodies in the US, EU and China (which now produces more glyphosate than Monsanto) among others, are ignoring the various dangers which have been proved.

Capitalism’s Miseries

In January the Oakland Institute sounded the alarm on the latest attack by the World Bank on poor and indigenous people around the world. The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons details how the Bank’s prescribed reforms, via a new land indicator in the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, promotes large-scale land acquisitions and the expansion of agribusinesses in the developing world. This new indicator is now a key element of the larger EBA project, which dictates pro-business reforms that governments should conduct in the agricultural sector. Initiated as a pilot in 38 countries in 2017, the land indicator is expected to be expanded to 80 countries in 2019. The project is funded by US and UK governments and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The EBA’s main recommendations to governments include formalising private property rights, easing the sale and lease of land for commercial use, systematising the sale of public land by auction to the highest bidder, and improving procedures for expropriation. Countries are scored on how well they implement the Bank’s policy advice. The scores then help determine the volume of aid money and foreign investment they receive.

Amidst flaws detailed in the report is the Bank’s prescription to developing countries’ governments, particularly in Africa, to transfer public lands with ‘potential economic value’ to private, commercial use, so that the land can be put to its supposed ‘best use’. Claiming that low-income countries do not manage public land in an effective manner, the Bank pushes for the privatization of public land as the way forward. This ignores the fact that millions of rural poor live and work on these lands, which are essential for their livelihoods while representing ancestral assets with deep social and cultural significance. It also ignores the basic fact that these small farmers have more than fulfilled the needs of the population for generations and it is the principles of capitalism that is being upset by them.

French think tank Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) has shown that agro-ecological farming alone has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 47 per cent and thereby keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees. Another important factor revealed shows that a transition from intensive farming to agro-ecological farming will bring down pesticides consumption by 380,000 tonnes per year in Europe alone. What could that figure be globally?

Most climate mitigation studies point to more crop intensification which means a hyper-intensive farming system leading to more toxic soils, more water mining resulting in more empty aquifers, and more contamination of the food chain. This methodology was behind the launch of the ‘New Vision for Agriculture’ at the World Economic Forum 2009 aiming at increasing food production by 20 percent, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, and reducing rural poverty by 20 percent every decade. The list of companies ready to initiate the ‘New Vision for Agriculture’ clearly shows that this ‘new vision’ is simply another version of the ‘old vision’ – capitalist necessity for profit. Included in the list are Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International.

Chemical or Ecological?

The UN-sponsored TEEB initiative – The Economics of Ecosystems and  Biodiversity – for agriculture and food, has in its latest study warned of a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions emanating from farming practices, from cutting down forests to make land available for cultivation to food waste dumped in landfills, accounting for between 47 to 51 percent of global gas emissions. Contrary to the ‘New Vision for Agriculture’ the IDDRI study mentioned above addresses these problems with the aim of eliminating them.

Returning to India new studies investigating the relationship between intensive agriculture and organic farming with regard to climate change and crop yield have revealed some interesting truths, contrary to many earlier claims by transnational corporations. A major initiative was launched when village elders in Punnukula village in Khamam district of Andhra Pradesh came together more than 15 years ago to stop the use of chemical pesticides. This local initiative led to the introduction of Non-Pesticides Management (NPM) under the Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) expanding to 3.6 million acres without the use of pesticides.

Following local enthusiasm and acceptance by the state, Andhra Pradesh launched Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) aiming to bring non-chemical agriculture to its nearly 6 million farmers by the end of the year 2024. Just one year after the introduction of Zero Budget Natural Farming a study by Azim Premji University showed that crop yields in fact had gone up from 11 to 79 percent – 11 percent in rice and the highest, 79 percent, in aubergine.

The challenges both facing and threatening the vast majority of the global population stem from the totally encompassing capitalist system. The questions to be asked are crucial for the well-being of the planet, from plankton to human. How shall we approach the challenges of global warming? Should populations be forced to move from their homes? Can we accept being poisoned by what we eat and drink? These and other issues all require answers. We have a single answer to them all – the solution is socialism.

Janet Surman

Pathfinders: Meat without the bleat (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Meat without the bleat

Panda pie anyone? How about cheetah chow mein or koala curry? The much-anticipated arrival of in-vitro synthetic meat is almost upon us, with the first artificial pork sausage now an estimated six months away (New Scientist, 3 September). Since the animals normally used for meat are those that were historically easiest to domesticate regardless of whether they were the best tasting, this could be an opportunity to get really adventurous. And, come to think of it, why stop at living animals? With the genomes of many extinct animals now in the bag or in the pipeline it should in theory be possible to serve up dodo and dinosaur too. And for the slightly perverse gourmand what about Neanderthal? We could even find out whether it’s true what they say about ‘long pig’. And all of it pain, guilt and mostly fat and resource-free, according to the hype in which it will surely be packaged. Though no lower in energy consumption than poultry or pork production, in-vitro promises to produce about a tenth of the greenhouse gases associated with beef farming and use around five percent of the water and one percent of the land. Vegetarians should be ecstatic, and meat eaters can stop worrying about ethics. Farmyard animals should be dancing in the barns for joy as the Third Meat Revolution emancipates the worldwide Doner-tariat and slaughterhouses become overgrown with weeds. Fish can swim round the mill pond rejoicing at their imminent return from the brink of extinction.

For socialists with a serious concern for world food supplies this ought to be unequivocally welcome news. Socialism, as a society of universal free access, presupposes material abundance, or at least sufficiency, and food is at the top of the critical list. Though the world could currently support around 10 billion using third world farming methods, the diet would be unenviably drab, and probably less healthy than at any time since the first development of farming. To provide the world’s population with the kind of meat diet and general variety the West is accustomed to would take between three and five planets. With this technology however, one of socialism’s most pressing problems looks well on the way to being solved.

Hard not to get excited about, surely? Well, we don’t want to piss on anyone’s mammothburger and chips, but let’s just take a moment here. Some scientists anticipate public resistance, citing a ‘yuk factor’ response as consumers react against this ‘unnatural’ technology. A thoroughly unscientific straw poll around our office’s meat-eaters revealed that, assuming general equivalence in price, two would indeed take this view, since meat ‘ought to come from real animals’, two wouldn’t care, given what goes in today’s meat products anyway, and one would be enthusiastic for ethical reasons. This suggests that though the ‘yuk factor’ is likely to be a real phenomenon, it is not universal. It may only be a temporary reaction too, since ‘artificial’ foods like quorn have grown in popularity over time. Comparisons with Europe-wide rejection of ‘unnatural’ GM foods are rather off-beam. People don’t just object to GM because it’s ‘unnatural’, whatever that means, but also because it is largely untested and untrusted technology in the hands of untrustworthy corporations, and in the case of the notorious ‘terminator gene’, blatantly used for the purpose of ruthless profit in defiance of any conceivable human interest.

One can hope that capitalism will use in-vitro technology in the best possible way to produce the best possible products, but one should add a piquant splash of cynicism to that dish. What is just as likely to emerge is something stringy, greasy and anaemic for the labouring classes while the price of ‘real’ meat rockets along with its upper class mystique. Capitalism will certainly try to wring the best possible profit from the technology, but it may be left to socialism to find the best possible use for it.


Citizens band

Socialists with their own PCs might like to consider donating some free machine time to important scientific research projects, many of which now use distributed networks of home PCs for the huge data-crunching they need.  The SETI@home project is probably the most iconic of these, the quest to find extraterrestrial intelligence that has such a remote chance of success that wags have observed they’d do better to mount a search for terrestrial intelligence instead. Now, and with more hope of useful result, the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is requesting home help to process the data coming from radio observatories, including the soon to be built Square Kilometre Array, itself a distributed multiple-dish telescope the effective size of a continent (‘Skynet seeks to crowdsource the stars’, BBC Online, 13 September). This is exactly how we’ll do so much science in socialism too, because quite apart from the efficiency of distributed parallel data processing, distributed human participation is the whole point, the whole socialist raison d’etre. And how amazing to be directly involved in new discoveries! But did they really have to call it Skynet? Wasn’t that the name of the rogue system that took over the world and killed everyone in the film Terminator? Oooer….


Capitalism gets smart?

The University of Illinois’ Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science recently announced a study which used millions of press articles to predict unrest in North Africa retrospectively, and which could, say the report authors, be used to predict future conflicts (‘Supercomputer predicts revolution’, BBC Online, 9 September). While the likelihood of future conflicts in capitalism is a total no-brainer, the ability to predict just when and where would clearly be of no small advantage to the world’s ruling classes. A not dissimilar claim is being made for a system which links global unrest to climatic conditions, with the observation that conflict rose in tropical countries during hot and dry El Nino periods and fell during cool and wet La Ninas, even independently of local conditions such as droughts and famines (New Scientist, 27 August). Meanwhile IBM has built a ‘cognitive’ microchip with transistor ‘synapses’ connecting wire ‘dendrites’ in imitation of a neuron cell in the brain. By connecting such chips together IBM expects to construct a supercomputer with some 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses (the human brain has 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses), and all in about the space of a shoebox – or a brain (New Scientist, 27 August). No doubt this paragon will also be pressed into service to fathom the complexities of capitalism and predict future wars, conflicts, slumps and civil unrest. The boundless faith some scientists have in their own gadgets is truly wondrous to behold, as is this farcical idea that they can use them to expose the hidden wires of the capitalist system. We suggest that they would probably get as good a level of predictive accuracy, and significantly better analysis, if they just shelled out £1.50 for a copy of the Socialist Standard every month.

Paddy Shannon

Pathfinders: Wheat on Trial (2012)

The Pathfinders column from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The whole GM debate has reared its ugly hydra heads again, after a recent showdown at a field near Harpenden where researchers faced protesters across the massed ranks of Hertfordshire Constabulary in order to decide the fate of a field of experimental aphid-busting GM wheat. The protesters had announced their intention of ‘decontaminating’ the field, i.e. launching a guerrilla raid to pull up the crop. Dismayed, the boffins called in the Plod. The crop was then trampled underfoot anyway by a stampede of press reporters smelling a good story.

Both sides have websites detailing their arguments, and both sides claim to be using evidence-based reasoning. So who’s right? On the one hand the protestors can point to large-scale popular opposition to ‘untested’ GM technology, not just in the UK but across Europe, which fact alone may lend their guerrilla strategy somewhat more legitimacy than it would otherwise have. But whether this opposition is informed or simply knee-jerk is a moot question. The scientists can point to large-scale GM use in America and China, with no major disasters reported.

A quick and dirty summation of the arguments goes something like this. Pro: engineering crop species to give off an aphid repellent will reduce the use of harmful pesticides by farmers. In fact recent research coming out of China suggests it will even reduce pesticide use in neighbouring crops, as pest predators proliferate and gobble up every last bug (New Scientist, 16 June). Con: it might do so in the short term, but there is no scientific consensus for this. In the longer term it is just as likely to create more pests, or new pests, or super-pests through resistance. Pro: this is independent, non-profit research conducted properly and in the best interests of knowledge and human wellbeing. Con: maybe, but the big agro-chemical companies are waiting in the wings, ready to make huge profits, and they are the ones really calling the tune. Pro: how can we test new strains when you go around pulling up crops and then complaining that our new strains are untested? Con: you can test them all you want, just do it indoors and out of harm’s way. Pro: you don’t have the right to pull up crops unilaterally. Con: you don’t have the right to plant them either. Pro: you say you want a public debate, but you turned one down when we offered it. Con: you only gave us seven days to get the speakers! We want a debate, but not entirely on your terms. Pro: humans have always genetically engineered plant species – it’s how the Neolithic revolution got started. Con: selective crop breeding is not at all the same thing as direct gene manipulation, and it’s disingenuous to pretend it is. Anyway past risks don’t automatically justify future risks. Pro: GM technology could be a huge boon for the future of human food supplies. Just what are you so afraid of? Con: that depends. What have you got?

Considering what else is going on in the world right now, this little dispute seems like something of a sideshow. As the rest of this issue of the Socialist Standard makes plain, socialists are interested in science and the scientific method, so to us destroying research feels rather akin to book-burning, even if it is just a publicity stunt. If GM technology works, and it seems to, we’ll need to use it in socialism. The protestors might have a point about the corporations who are standing by ready to invest, and whose interests can be expected to trump those of the general population, but this is a political objection not a scientific one.

In fact the whole dispute is best understood as a political rather than a scientific argument. The fear that ‘something might get out’ into the environment is vague at best. Even if other local plant  species began to acquire aphid-repellent properties by horizontal gene transfer, it doesn’t seem likely that this would result in a wholesale collapse of the food chain, and it hasn’t happened anywhere else. As for the resistance problem and the possible creation of super-aphids, we face that anyway with conventional pesticides or indeed any conceivable anti-pest strategy. That’s the problem with evolution, and we’re not about to find a permanent get-out clause for that.

What the protestors really seem to dislike is the idea that some faceless bureaucrat from DEFRA can foist something onto them without their agreement. This is not really about the science, it’s about local people wanting to preserve the agreeable fiction that they are the ones in control of their own environment. As with anti-road lobbies and all manner of other Nimby single-issues, the gut objection to being put upon is not felt to be enough to persuade others, so it is tricked out in scientific fancy dress and rolled out for public consumption in the press. Wherever a government project is set up, the locality immediately produces a plethora of self-taught architects, wind-energy enthusiasts, road transport analysts, climatologists, radiation-related disease specialists and, as here, farmyard genetic engineers. If the UK really had this level of latent expertise in every shire and every village, China and the USA would quail in terror and the annual Nobel ceremony would be held in Tunbridge Wells.

Not that local objectors to government projects are necessarily wrong in feeling put upon. They are being put upon. But so are we all, every day, when we have the capitalist system foisted on us, a system which takes but does not give, which shouts but does not listen, and which elevates a fat, greedy micro-class to indolent luxury while we slave and rot in their service. That is the real problem, compared to which local disputes about GM wheat are just chaff.

Paddy Shannon

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

After their success at finding the Higgs boson, scientists at CERN are planning to fire politicians at each other in the giant collider to see if any truth falls out. Said one physicist: ‘Politicians observe many of the laws of quantum mechanics, including uncertainty, entanglement and occupying multiple positions simultaneously. Their known properties however explain very little of what goes on in the real world. Up to 96 percent of their physical reality occupies a domain known as ‘Doesn’t Matter’. We think they may be WIMPs. We also hope to investigate whether they have invisible superheavy partners called the Soron, the Warron and the Bilderbergon.’A sigma-5 level discovery is currently considered unlikely, CERN says: ‘Politicians decay very rapidly into other forms, such as chairmen or business consultants, and data is often corrupted. There is a high statistical probability of false positives. Given enough collisions, some of them will tell the truth by accident without even realising it.’

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British plant scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have won a $10m Gates Foundation grant to develop GM cereal crops for third world farmers with little access to fertilisers. “We’re delighted to get this grant,”said the head of the research team, “it’s true that the seed crops only cost around half a million to develop, but we need nine and a half million for security to keep the anti-GM protestors out.”

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David Cameron has said in a speech on rail investment that he is as committed to the coalition government as he ever was: “This government is not going off the rails. It’s as safe as houses… er, and you can bank on it.”

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One in eight soldiers has attacked someone after coming home from a combat deployment, according to an MoD-funded study of 13,000 personnel. ‘This is appalling’, the Defence Secretary said yesterday, ‘no wonder we can’t beat the bloody Afghans. I’m ordering an investigation into why 7 out of 8 of our troops are such Nancies.’

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The UK economy should enjoy an “Indian summer” after a poor first half of the year, says a leading forecaster. Speculation continues over the decision to hand over the task of financial projections to the Met Office, where an insider reported that ‘we always get the blame anyway, so it makes sense for those bastards at the Treasury to stab us in the back too.’House prices were washed away in the Midlands last week as the FTSE fell nine inches in a single trading day. A cold front over the Euro is blamed for the worst summer on record.