Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Of course, the billionaire interests behind this try to portray what they are doing as some kind of humanitarian endeavour – saving the planet with ‘climate-friendly solutions’, ‘helping farmers’ or ‘feeding the world’. In the cold light of day, however, what they are really doing is repackaging and greenwashing the dispossessive strategies of imperialism.

The following text sets out some key current trends affecting food and agriculture and begins by looking at the Gates Foundation’s promotion of a failing model of industrial, (GMO) chemical-intensive agriculture and the deleterious impacts it has on indigenous farming and farmers, human health, rural communities, agroecological systems and the environment.

Alternatives to this model are then discussed which focus on organic agriculture and specifically agroecology. However, there are barriers to implementing these solutions, not least the influence of global agri-capital in the form of agritech and agribusiness conglomerates which have captured key institutions.

The discussion then moves on to focus on the situation in India because that country’s ongoing agrarian crisis and the farmers’ struggle encapsulates what is at stake for the world.

Finally, it is argued that the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’ is being used as cover to manage a crisis of capitalism and the restructuring of much of the global economy, including food and agriculture.

Read the full article written by Colin Todhunter on Global Research

More information on food sovereignty in Lendemains solidaires No 1