radiofree.asia

Category: Agriculture

  • Trump’s Trade War Is Stressing Red State Farmers

    Bryant Kagay is a farmer in Missouri feeling the uncertainty of President Donald Trump’s tariffs up close. He voted for Trump last year but now questions whether the trade war with China is part of a long-term strategy that could help US businesses or merely a short-term negotiating tactic. In this episode of More To The Story, he says the on-again, off-again nature of the trade war could restrict his ability to sell agricultural goods like soybeans when the harvest comes this fall.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory (Reveal)
    Listen: What Trump’s Tariff Shock Will Cost You (More To The Story)
    Read: Trump’s Assault on Small Farmers (Mother Jones)


    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Trump’s budget bill is on the verge of transforming how America eats

    Early this month, after some equivocation, President Donald Trump briefly endorsed the idea to hike taxes on the wealthiest Americans in his budget proposal to Congress. Economists were quick to point out the meager impact a new millionaire tax bracket would have on the ultra-rich, particularly in the context of other proposed tax cuts that would offset any pain points for them. Still, the backlash from Republican members of Congress was swift. They spurned the proposal and instead advanced breaks for wealthier Americans. Last week, that version of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives and headed to the Senate. 

    Tax policy isn’t the only way that this bill proposes to further widen the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Though the more than 1,000-page megabill will look somewhat different once it advances through the Senate, analysts say that there are three food and agricultural provisions expected to remain intact: an unprecedented cut to the nation’s nutrition programs; an increase of billions in subsidies aimed at industrial farms; and a rescission of some Inflation Reduction Act funding intended to help farmers deal with the impacts of climate change.

    If they do, the changes will make it harder for Americans to afford food and endure the financial toll of climate-related disasters. They will also make it more difficult for farmers to adapt to climate change — from an ecological standpoint and an economic one. Overall, the policy shifts would continue Trump’s effort to transform the nation’s food and agricultural policy landscape — from one that keeps at least some emphasis on the country’s neediest residents to one that offers government help to those who need it least.

    Ever since the inception of the federal food stamps program in 1939, when it was created during the Great Depression to provide food to the hungry while simultaneously stimulating the American economy by encouraging the purchase of surplus commodities, what’s now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has been falsely portrayed as a contributor to unemployment rates and politicized as an abuse of taxpayer dollars. 

    A vast body of research has found the opposite: roughly 42 percent of SNAP recipients are children, more than half of adult recipients who can work are either employed or actively seeking employment; the program’s improper payments are most often merely mistakes made by eligible workers or households, not cases of outright fraud; and the benefits keep millions of Americans out of poverty. 

    A sign with pictures of food saying we accept EBT
    A sign outside of a grocery store in 2023 welcomes those on food assistance in a Brooklyn neighborhood that has a large immigrant and elderly population.
    Spencer Platt / Getty Images

    Right now, more than 40 million Americans are enrolled in SNAP, an anti-hunger program written into the farm bill and administered through the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. The federal government has always fully paid for benefits issued by the program. States operate the program on a local level, determining eligibility and issuing those benefits, and pay part of the program’s administrative costs. How much money a household gets from the government each month for groceries is based on income, family size, and a tally of certain expenses. An individual’s eligibility is also constrained by “work requirements,” which limit the amount of time adults can receive benefits without employment or participation in a work-training program. 

    The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cuts to SNAP now being proposed could amount to nearly $300 billion through 2034. An Urban Institute analysis of the bill found that the cuts would be achieved by broadening work requirements to apply to households with children and adults up to the age of 64; limiting states’ ability to request work-requirement waivers for people in high unemployment areas; and reducing the opportunities for discretionary exemptions. But most unprecedented is how the bill shifts the financial onus of SNAP’s costs onto states — increasing the administrative costs states have to cover to up to 75 percent, as well as mandating that states pay for a portion of the benefits themselves. 

    If the Senate approves the proposed approach to require states to cover some SNAP costs, the Budget Office report projects that, over the next decade, about 1.3 million people could see their benefits reduced or eliminated in an average month.

    The burden of these changes to federal policy would only cascade down, leading to a variety of likely outcomes. Some states might be able to cover the slack. But others won’t, even if they wanted to: Budget-strapped states would then have to choose between reducing benefits or sharing the costs with cities and counties. Ultimately, anti-hunger advocates warn, gutting SNAP will undoubtedly increase food insecurity across the nation — at a time when persistently high food costs are among most Americans’ biggest economic concerns. As communities in all corners of the country endure stronger and more frequent climate-related disasters, the slashing of nutrition programs would also likely decrease the amount of emergency food aid that would be available after a heatwave, hurricane, or flood — funding that has already been reduced by federal disinvestment. 

    Sweeping cuts to SNAP would also constrain how much income small farmers nationwide would be able to earn. That’s because SNAP dollars are used at thousands of farmers markets, farm stands, and pick-your-own operations throughout the country. 

    Groups like the environmental nonprofit GrowNYC helped launch the use of SNAP dollars at farmers markets in New York almost two decades ago, and have since built matching dollar incentives into their business model to encourage shoppers at the organization’s greenmarket and farmstand locations to spend their monthly food aid allotments on fresh, locally grown produce. 

    The program “puts money in the farmers pockets,” said Marcel Van Ooyen, CEO of GrowNYC, and “helps low-income individuals access healthy, fresh, local food. It’s a double-win.” 

    He expects to see the bill’s SNAP cuts result in a “devastating” trend of shuttering local farmers’ markets across the nation, which, he said, ”is going to have a real effect both on food access and support of the farming communities.”

    While the ethos of this bill can be gleaned by counting up the proposed cuts to social safety nets like SNAP, looking at the legislation from another perspective — where Trump wants the government to spend more — helps to make it clearer. These dramatic changes to nutrition programs would be accompanied by a massive increase in commodity farm subsidies.

    The budget bill increases subsidies to commodity farms — ones that grow crops like corn, cotton, and soybeans — by about $50 billion. Commodity farmers “typically have larger farms,” according to Erin Foster West, a policy campaigns director specializing in land, water, and climate at National Young Farmers Coalition. A trend of consolidation toward fewer but more industrial farm operations was already underway. Less than 6 percent of U.S. farms with annual sales of at least $1 million sold more than three-fourths of all agricultural products between 2017 and 2022. The Trump plan might just help that trend along.

    Earlier this year, the USDA issued about a third of the $30 billion authorized by Congress in December through the American Relief Act to commodity producers who were affected by low crop prices in 2024. Because the program significantly limited who could access the funding, it funneled financial help away from smaller farmers and into the pockets of industrial-scale operations. An April report by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute concluded the $10 billion bailout for commodity farmers “was probably not justified.” 

    Later in their report, the American Enterprise Institute authors note that lobbyists representing commodity farms have already begun pushing for more subsidies because of the fallout of the Trump administration’s tariffs. 

    Then they pose a question: “Does the Trump administration need to give farmers further substantial handouts, especially when it is doing nothing for other sectors and households significantly affected by its policy follies?”

    The budget bill, with its $50 billion windfall for commodity farms, may be its own answer. 

    This September will mark the deadline for the second consecutive year-long extension that Congress passed for the farm bill, the legislation that governs many aspects of America’s food and agricultural systems and is typically reauthorized every five years without much contention. Of late, legislators have been unable to get past the deeply politicized struggle to agree on the omnibus bill’s nutrition and conservation facets. The latest farm bill was the 2018 package.

    The farm bill covers everything from nutrition assistance programs to crop subsidies and conservation measures. A number of provisions, like crop insurance, are permanently funded, meaning the reauthorization timeline does not impact them. But others, such as beginning farmer and rancher development grants and local food promotion programs, are entirely dependent upon the appropriations within each new law. 

    A man gathers vegetables from a grow house at night
    Farmer Jacob Thomas pulls plants as he prepares for a farmers market the next morning on April 25, 2025 in Leavenworth, Kansas. He had a grant for a new distribution warehouse that was rescinded then regranted. Now he’s scared to proceed for fear it will be rescinded again.
    Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post via Getty Images

    Trump’s tax plan contains a slick budgeting maneuver that takes unobligated climate-targeted funds from the agricultural conservation programs in President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, and re-invests that money into the same farm bill programs. The funding boost provided by the IRA was designed to reign in the immense emissions footprint of the agricultural industry, while also helping farmers deal with the impacts of climate change by providing funding for them to protect plants from severe weather, extend their growing seasons, or adopt cost-cutting irrigation methods that boost water conservation.

    On its surface, the inclusion of unspent IRA conservation money in the tax package may seem promising, if notably at odds with the Trump administration’s public campaign to all but vanquish the Biden-era climate policy. Erin Foster West, at the National Young Farmers Coalition, calls it “a mixed bag.” 

    By proposing that the IRA funding be absorbed into the farm bill, Foster West says, Trump creates an opportunity to build more and longer-term funding for “hugely impactful and very effective” conservation work. On the other hand, she notes, the Trump megabill removes the requirements that the unspent pot of money must fund climate-specific projects. Foster West is wary that the removal of the climate guardrails could lead to more conservation money funneling into industrial farms and planet-polluting animal feeding operations. 

    The House budget package also omits many of the food and agricultural programs affected by the federal funding freeze that would typically have been included in a farm bill. Those include programs offering support to beginning farmers and ranchers, farmer-led sustainable research, rural development and farm loans, local and regional food supply chains, and those that help farmers access new markets. None of these were incorporated into the Republican megabill. 

    “It’s just a disinvestment in the programs that smaller-scale, and beginning farmers, younger farmers, tend to use. So we’re just seeing, like, resources being pulled away,” said Foster West. 

    Moreover, up until now, several agricultural leaders in Congress have expressed confidence about passing a new “skinny” farm bill, to address all programs left out by reconciliation, before September. Provisions in the Trump budget bill may erode that confidence. By gutting funding for SNAP and increasing funding for commodity support, two leading Republican farm bill priorities, the need for GOP legislators to negotiate for a bipartisan bill diminishes. 

    a building with two banners both saying USDA. One has a photo of Donald trump and the other has a photo of Lincoln.
    Banners showing images of President Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln hang on the side of a U.S. Department of Agriculture building in Washington, D.C., in May 2025.
    Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images

    Inherent to the farm bill are provisions set to incentivize Congress to break through its own gridlock. If neither a new farm bill nor an extension is passed ahead of its deadline, some commodity programs revert to a 1930s and 1940s law, which helps trigger what is colloquially known as the “dairy cliff” — after which the government must buy staggering volumes of milk products at a parity price set in 1949 and risk spiking milk prices at the supermarket. Trump’s tax package would suspend this trigger until 2031.

    Under Trump’s vision, encoded in the tax bill, U.S. food and agriculture policy would “cannibalize” itself, according to Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The policies meant to make better food more available to more people, and support the producers that grow it, in other words, could make way for a world in which fewer people will be able to farm — and to eat.

    “It’s an irresponsible approach to federal food and farm policy,” Lavender said. “One that does not support all farmers, does not support the entire food and farm system.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s budget bill is on the verge of transforming how America eats on May 30, 2025.

    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

  • Trump’s USDA tried to erase climate data. This lawsuit forced it back online.

    The United States Department of Agriculture says it will restore climate-related information on its websites, following a lawsuit filed earlier this year by agriculture and environmental groups that say farmers rely heavily on these critical resources to adapt to warming temperatures. 

    In January, following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the USDA’s communications office instructed employees to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” and flag other pages that mention climate for review — a policy first reported by Politico. The following month, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, or NOFA-NY, joined the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group in suing the agency to republish the pages, which included information about federal loans for farmers and an interactive climate map. 

    This week, the USDA filed a letter to a U.S. district judge in the Southern District of New York saying that it “will restore the climate-change-related web content that was removed post-inauguration, including all USDA web pages and interactive tools enumerated in plaintiffs’ complaint.” The agency said it would also comply with federal laws with respect to “future publication or posting decisions” involving the scrubbed climate information. The letter came days before a hearing regarding the plaintiffs’ move for a preliminary injunction was scheduled to take place.

    NOFA-NY, an organization that advocates for sustainable food systems and assists growers with adopting organic farming practices, called the USDA’s about-face “a big win” for its members. 

    “I have to say that, for as much as farmers have been through in the past couple of months, this felt really good,” said Marcie Craig, the association’s executive director.

    NOFA-NY and the other plaintiffs are represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 

    The fact that the USDA agreed to restore its climate resources online without a court order and before the scheduled hearing “reinforces what we knew all along,” said Earthjustice associate attorney Jeff Stein, “which is that the purge of climate change-related web pages is blatantly unlawful.”

    The development marks a rare moment of optimism for U.S. growers, who have faced numerous setbacks from the Trump administration. Since January, the administration has sent shockwaves through the agricultural sector as it paused federal grant and loan programs that supported local and regional food systems and farmers’ climate resiliency efforts. The administration also froze funding for rural clean energy programs, only to unfreeze it with caveats, creating headaches and financial stress for growers. Federal funding cuts have also threatened the status of agricultural research, including projects designed to boost sustainability in the face of climate change. 

    A farm in Massachusetts that saw its USDA grant to build a solar installation frozen by the Trump administration.
    David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe via Getty Images

    In the face of these roadblocks, Craig noted that her optimism tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism. “I think we all bear a level of cautious optimism about what actually comes to fruition on this action,” she said. As of Thursday, the USDA has restored pages about the Inflation Reduction Act and rural clean energy programs, while other pages remain offline, according to Earthjustice. But Craig agreed with Stein that the USDA’s decision to restore resources that help farmers adapt to climate change without a hearing or court order is a “positive” sign. 

    The purge of climate web pages, along with the federal funding freezes, have been “crippling” for farmers, said Craig. 

    NOFA-NY staff often responded to growers’ questions by sharing the USDA’s online resources. One particularly helpful tool, said Craig, was a page about loans for “climate-smart agriculture,” or farming practices that help sequester carbon or reduce emissions, on the website of the Farmers Service Agency, a subagency of the USDA. The page included a chart that listed the practical and environmental benefits of different climate-smart agriculture techniques, as well as federal funding opportunities to help farmers implement these practices.

    It was a “really great example of very specific, clear information” on climate adaptation, “very user-friendly,” said Craig.

    Even if those funding sources were technically still available to farmers this winter and spring, the fact that web pages referring to those grants and loans were scrubbed made them inaccessible, she added.

    A few days before the USDA filed its letter to the judge, the agency had alerted the plaintiffs’ lawyers of its decision to reupload its climate data, according to Stein. In its letter on Monday, the USDA said most of the content should be back online over the course of the following two weeks; the department also committed to filing a joint status report with Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute in three weeks to update the court on its progress. 

    The hearing that the USDA and the plaintiffs were set to attend later this month has been adjourned. But, Stein said, the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction — which, if granted by a judge, would have ordered the USDA to put back up its climate-related web pages — is still pending. That means that, should the USDA not make progress toward republishing its climate resources online over the next few weeks, the plaintiffs have another way to push their demands forward.

    “We want to make sure that USDA in fact follows through on its commitment,” said Stein.

    Editor’s note: Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council are advertisers with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s USDA tried to erase climate data. This lawsuit forced it back online. on May 15, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • When Trump Ended a Program Feeding Californians in Need, Farmers Fought Back

    Every year brings its own unique challenges for California farmers: water shortages, fires, finding laborers to do the work, bureaucrats in Sacramento adding new requirements and fees, and more. But the second term of President Donald Trump has made this year very different. As part of deep cuts across much of the government, the administration of President Donald Trump chopped $1 billion…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump’s USDA Dismantled Decades of Federal Food Policy in Just 100 Days

    Despite its widespread perception, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is involved in much more than farming. The federal agency, established in 1862, is made up of 29 subagencies and offices and just last year was staffed by nearly 100,000 employees. It has an annual budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. Altogether it administers funding, technical support, and regulations for: international…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Finding the Spectacular in the Society of the Spectacle

    The internet and computers have been a boon to essayists like Edward Curtin (and me!). He/you/we can publish at online sites (DissidentVoice.org is a favorite for us) and then publish our screeds in book form if we are prolific and eloquent enough. Curtin was a philosophy/social theory professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. This collection of Curtin’s articles, At the Lost and Found (2025), is a case in point. There are some fine ones; certainly, his introduction and the opening ones are challenging postmodern forays for the uninitiated, yet still readable. His students were very lucky.

    As Trump-Musk take a hatchet to American higher education, I marvel at the thought that there are hundreds if not thousands of Curtins (maybe not as good) across the vast US, most at small liberal arts colleges, all in love with words and wisdom, all teaching their students lovingly, urging them to THINK. That is surely the beauty of America, the promise to take the world’s poor and reviled and give them the chance to be someone, do something worthwhile.

    Curtin, from his earliest memories, saw that conventional life was a provocation because it hid more than it revealed; that it harbored secrets that could not be exposed or else the make-believe nature of normal life would collapse like a cardboard set. Like everyone, I was ushered onto this Shakespearean stage and have acted out many roles assigned to me, but always with the inner consciousness that something was amiss. Everyone seemed to be playing someone, but who was the player? Is the role playing us? Are we marionettes in some pipe dream, and is there an author behind it? God? The devil? Capitalism?

    Curtin’s postmodern credo comes from Thoreau: We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. There are no neutral observers.

    His goal: to oppose these scoundrels and their ilk who kill and wage endless wars against innocents around the world, in a way that will delight and last a little while.

    Writing as music

    Curtin admits he is obsessed with words. That they play him. He, in turn, uses them to produce both astute political analyses and art in luminescent words and sentences that pulsate. I think of them as intertwined lovers. AI is taking capitalism to its Faustian apotheosis, to mechanize us all, to eliminate passion and will. Reduce thought to dead words. Curtin compares his writing to composing, hoping to leave a fresh song in your heart, something to help you see the pageant of our lives in more than just dead words.

    In The End of the Speed Limit on the Highway to Nowhere, he compares us to Sisyphus but without the illusion of ascent, merely going in a circle, returning to the same grey reality of the freedom-to-choose-what-is-always-the-same, seen as a mediated, rootless reality that is no reality at all. Yes, you can fly anywhere in the world (if you are part of SWIFT), but you will find the same McDonald’s and box stores, more or less the same sandy beaches, and souvenirs made in China. Fake diversity. Fake news, to quote our fake king-of-the-world.

    We are flooded with unneeded techno ‘miracles’, but without roots we are swept away by them, our mediated reality providing no signposts for where we are headed, no warnings of pitfalls that threaten our real Reality and us, allowing us to pause, to take a stand. Root in Latin is radix, i.e., radical, which today means extreme, as if we unconsciously mold our thinking to beware of rootedness in our rootless world, where having roots is suspect, even reactionary. We celebrated rootlessness, the dream of travel, and escape as the best experience. How many of us live/die where we were born?

    How language betrays us! Betray as in reveal and subvert. Curtin calls himself a contrarian and relishes contronyms (e.g., betray, fast, sanction, wear, weather, wind up). I’m big on antonyms that our mediated reality turns into identities, e.g., war = peace, progress = regress, bad = good. We see how language reveals much about our muddled thinking, storing clues from the past, and warning us of our illusions.

    Guy Debord begins The Society of the Spectacle with a tongue-in-cheek parody of Marx’s opening of Kapital: In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Like Marx’s commodities, spectacles are ‘use values’, but even more removed from the consumer than bubble gum or a sports car, as they happen only in your mind, illusion pure and simple, reality so artfully mediated that you pay your money, enjoy, and blissfully forget and move on to the next instalment.

    No Virgil to guide us

    Today’s ‘great reset’ just may succeed because we have lost the most important roots, our spirituality, buried beneath a heap of commodity-spectacles. Walking through the forest to the genuinely spectacular Taughannock Falls, Curtin gloomily ponders the massacre of Iroquois two centuries ago and asks: Is there any place on this blood-soaked earth where a semi-conscious person can rest easy?

    He sees our descent into our current Hell/abyss as starting with Reagan, enshrining illusion in the White House, his assigning communism to the trash heap of history, his attack on social welfare, and his ignorance of the environment. All the presidents since have been variations on his MAGA—even Clinton and Obama credit Reagan as their inspiration. Reagan certainly helped collapse the Soviet Union, but he turned the US into a one-party state, taking his lead from the moribund communists.

    And we accept it, as we are trapped in a simulacrum reality, a closed system, a solipsism.

    We have no Virgil to guide us through Hell and set us on the road to enlightenment. Wait! We have AI to do that for us. Our worship of the machine is such that as the machine ‘matures’, we have let it take our place, to think for us, even to simulate emotions, speaking as if emoting. The Turing test. The machine’s goal is Darwinian, too: survival of the fittest. Unless we rediscover the miracle of life, root ourselves in a genuine experience of Reality, take back control from the machine, and even ban or dismantle it where it is harmful.

    Curtin is a postmodernist, drawing inspiration from the French Debord and Baudrillard. And looks to Joyce for a way forward. In The Contronymal Cage, he quotes Joyce on the language of Joyce’s English-born Jesuit dean of studies, who speaks a different English from that of the Irish rebel. We must take control of our language, be conscious of where it came from, its roots, and how it is used to keep us trapped now in a simulacrum hyperreality, as language constitutes reality as much as it describes it.

    Red pill time

    There is no ‘heppi end’ to the stories we weave (or rather that weave us) in the Matrix. Poetry is an escape route, unashamedly subjective, rebellious, and questioning. Another way is the essay, as Curtin knows well, and Edward Said, who argued that his nation, Palestine, is a narrative; that we must tell our stories of distorted reality and oppression to escape the Matrix and root ourselves in unmediated Reality. Throw off Blake’s ‘mind-forged manacles’. Recognize that life is not a dead mechanism but is conscious, that we are part of a conscious universe, not as Sisyphus repeating his tortured, pointless circle of unreality, but as Dante, guided in his spiritual quest by the great minds of the past, teaching us to distinguish the devil from God.

    What about virtual reality? It sounds ominous, blurring the line between reality and fantasy, but not if we are aware. That goes for all techno miracles. And I for one would much prefer to take a virtual reality trip to visit Mecca in the 7th c than to squash Nature with a huge carbon footprint just to say ‘Kilroy was here’ in a dystopian 21st c Mecca. We can use technology wisely, even reject it if it destroys Nature, undermines society, and kills my soul.

    Though raised a Christian, and admiring Jesus, King, Romero, and all those who have died trying to make peace and justice a reality, Curtin is a secular humanist, not looking to traditional religions for answers to ‘why?’ today. He bemoans our loss of spirituality but doesn’t urge Christians to revive their faith, as I suspect he sees it threadbare. That’s where I point my finger. We need faith! That vacuum in my life led me to Islam as the only faith that is still alive, meaningful in a meaningless late capitalism.

    Islam was supposedly backward compared to the progressive West. But looking back now, I would suggest we would be much better off if the age of technology had arrived much more slowly, with a spiritual quest still the goal. The West lost its ailing Catholic spirituality with the Protestant Reformation, as it embraced capitalism and became a false spirituality, a materialism masquerading as spirituality, a treacherous inversion of our most fundamental, radical truth. Islam is slowly breaking its shackles, inflicted by the ‘progressive’ capitalist imperialist countries, which occupied Muslim lands, did the usual rape-and-pillage, and even attempted to erase millions of Muslims in Palestine, stealing their land, their spiritual heritage, which is rooted in the Real. Islam does not need Debord or Baudrillard to tell us that our reality is an illusion, that the ‘modern’ world has lost its soul, that the truth lies in the ‘backward’ world, the precapitalist, spirit-based civilizations. Islam’s immunity to ‘progress’ is its saving grace, as it answers our need for meaning in life, which is timeless, technologyless.

    Beware the counterinitiations

    René Guénon is the 20th-century thinker who first deconstructed the embrace of modernism in The Crisis of the Modern World (1927). He converted to Islam in the 1930s and embraced a traditional lifestyle, rejecting for the most part the illusory technology of the 20th century for ‘spiritual technologies’, even as our capitalist/ socialist societies pushed ahead to carry out greater and greater monstrosities. We have lost our highest faculty, intellectual intuition, i.e., direct apperception or gnosis. We have lost the very possibility of spiritual realization. The Soviet secular spirituality was the first to collapse, and Russia has returned to its Christian Orthodoxy roots, i.e., there is an exit ramp ‘back to the future’.

    Gueon coined the term ‘counterinitiation’, movements that are spiritual doppelgangers that mimic authentic spirituality. Protestantism’s embrace of capitalism is the greatest such ruse, which explains the thousands of evangelical sects all claiming to be true. Now you can fashion your own spirituality with a dash of tarot, yoga, and mindfulness. No! We must rediscover the wisdom of traditional religions, which have been discarded on our highway to nowhere. We need a great cosmic reset. Curtin sees himself as a contrarian, infatuated with contronyms. Language is a powerful repository of wisdom, embedded in great literature, especially poetry. But he doesn’t go the extra mile.

    Without a love, not just of words, but of spirituality, sacred words, essays like Curtin’s just depress me. In Hindu lore, we are in the declining period of civilization, known as the Kali Yuga (the Age of Darkness). It began with the rise of agriculture in 3000 BC, which unmoored us from our spiritual roots, embracing money, private property, and slavery. Three thousand years is a long nightmare, but it is also the necessary precursor to renewal, the cosmic reset.

    The Arts (I like to use caps for the ‘Real thing’) is our avenue for spiritual truths. Our screeds help us see the world in 4d (virtual reality a gimmicky version of this serious path), connect us with our Real environment, not the phony mediated environment of consumer capitalism. As for sacred vs profane, no, no! Everything is sacred, alive, to be connected with meaningfully, loved/hated. There is no neutral observer. I write with passion, or my writing is dead. And as for mindless rituals. No, no! The ritual of prayer is an active form of knowledge, a path to participate in eternal truths, our metaphysical roadmap, showing us the exit ramp from our highway to know-where. (Don’t you love language?)

    JFK and 9/11 litmus tests

    Curtin includes a long article about JFK. The Life and Public Assassination of John F Kennedy, one on JFK and Dulles, and The Assassination and Mrs. Paine. His great courage in the face of an assassination he expected can inspire us to oppose the systemic forces of evil that control the United States and are leading the world into the abyss. And one on Bob Dylan (‘our Emerson’) and his 2020 song about the assassination Murder Most Foul (thank you, Hamlet), whose lyrics about the conspiracy are ignored or mocked by our doppelganger media. Neither Dylan nor Walberg is going ‘gentle into that good night’, to quote Bob’s model and namesake Dylan Thomas.

    I like Curtin sharing personal experiences. There aren’t any independent, neutral observers or observations. He’s not dogmatic. A 9/11 essay at the Berkshire Edge (not included, a shame as the litmus test these days is where you stand on that elephant-in-the-room) dismisses the official story, assumes a conspiracy of the elite directed by the CIA. As for charges of Israel and Mossad, he’s skeptical both here and on JFK, arguing the CIA is too powerful to let that happen ‘outside the box’. I would point to many instances from the King David Hotel in 1948 to many, many assassinations of Palestinian — any — leaders it doesn’t like (Arafat and hundreds of guerrilla leaders). There is an unspoken hit list always in the creation, much like Ukraine’s Myrotvorets. No group, official or unofficial, comes near to Israel. Bin Laden, eat your heart out.

    Personally (remember, no neutral writers!), I think only Israeli terrorists are cynical and smart enough to do such a thing, using Saudi youth as patsies. Funny, Jews have been the world’s leading terrorists since Israel was created, and are exonerated, pointing the finger at the Muslim victims, defending themselves as the real terrorists. Curtin’s mild dissidence/apostasy went unpunished, except for a few comments ridiculing him as another conspiracy nut. I suspect he would have been treated much more severely if he had labeled Israelis, i.e., secular Jewish fanatics, as the perpetrators of JFK’s murder and/or 9/11.

    My sense is that Americans are too spooked, too afraid to point the finger at Israel as the villain-in-chief in the world today, largely responsible for our descent into Hell. US-Israel is tattooed on American minds. A spiritual mark of Cain in our dystopia, making sure we are ready for the mental gas chamber. Are tattoos removable? It’s very hard, painful, and leaves a scar. But, hey!, purging yourself of society’s inhumanity is worth it. Down with tattoos! They are haram in Islam with good reason. Our only identity needed to live a good life is identifying with God, trying to perfect ourselves, and getting as close to Him (not ‘him’) as possible. The world and our special place in it are the only proof we need of who we are and where we’re going.

    The post Finding the Spectacular in the Society of the Spectacle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Carcinogen Rising in Rice Supply Due to Climate Change

    Throughout the Yangtze River Delta, a region in southern China famed for its widespread rice production, farmers grow belts of slender green stalks. Before they reach several feet tall and turn golden brown, the grassy plants soak in muddy, waterlogged fields for months. Along the rows of submerged plants, levees store and distribute a steady supply of water that farmers source from nearby canals.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters.

    When an outbreak of deadly tornadoes tore through the small town of Mayfield, Kentucky, in December 2021, one family was slow to act, not because they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know that they should do anything.

    The family of Guatemalan immigrants only spoke Spanish, so they didn’t understand the tornado alert that appeared on their cell phones in English. “I was not looking at [an information source] that told me it was going to get ugly,” Rosa, identified only by her first name, told researchers for a study on how immigrant communities responded to the warnings. 

    Another alert popped up in Spanish, and Rosa and her family rushed downstairs to shelter. Ten minutes later, a tornado destroyed the second floor where they’d been. 

    For at least 30 years, the National Weather Service had been providing time- and labor-intensive manual translations into Spanish. Researchers have found that even delayed translations have contributed to missed evacuations, injuries, and preventable deaths. These kinds of tragedies prompted efforts to improve the speed and scope of translating weather alerts at local, state, and national levels.

    Early into the Biden administration, the agency began a series of experimental pilot projects to improve language translations of extreme weather alerts across the country. The AI translating company Lilt was behind one of them. By the end of 2023, the agency had rolled out a product using Lilt’s artificial intelligence software to automate translations of weather forecasts and warnings in Spanish and Chinese.

    “By providing weather forecasts and warnings in multiple languages, NWS will improve community and individual readiness and resilience as climate change drives more extreme weather events,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said in a press release announcing the 2023 launch. Since then, the service also added automatic translations into Vietnamese, French, and Samoan. The machine learning system could translate alerts in just two to three minutes — what might take a human translator an hour — said Joseph Trujillo Falcón, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose work supported the program. 

    And now those alerts are gone. The National Weather Service has indefinitely suspended its automated language translations because its contract with Lilt has lapsed, according to an April 1 administrative message issued by the agency. The sudden change has left experts concerned for the nearly 71 million people in the U.S. who speak a language other than English at home. As climate change supercharges calamities like hurricanes, heat waves, and floods, the stakes have never been higher — or deadlier. 

    “Because these translations are no longer available, communities who do not understand English are significantly less safe and less aware of the hazardous weather that might be happening in their area,” said a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee familiar with the translation project, whom Grist granted anonymity to protect them from retaliation. Hundreds of thousands of alerts were translated by the Lilt AI language model, the employee said.

    An internal memo reviewed by Grist showed that the National Weather Service has stopped radio translations for offices in its southern region, where 77 million people live, and does not plan to revert to a previous method of translation — meaning that its broadcasts will no longer contain Spanish translations of forecasts and warnings. The move enraged some workers at local NWS offices, according to conversations relayed to the employee, as the decision not to restart radio translations was due to the workload burden as the service’s workforce faces cuts under the Trump administration.

    No clear reason was given as to why the contract lapsed and the agency has discontinued its translations, the employee said. “Due to a contract lapse, NWS paused the automated language translation services for our products until further notice,” NOAA weather service spokesperson Michael Musher told Grist in a statement. Musher did not address whether the NWS plans to resume translations, nor did he address Grist’s additional requests for clarification. Lilt did not respond to a request for comment.

    Fernando Rivera, a disaster sociologist at the University of Central Florida who has studied language-equity issues in emergency response, told Grist the move by the administration “is not surprising” as it’s in “the same trajectory in terms of [Trump] making English the official language.” Rivera also pointed to how, within hours of the president’s inauguration, the Trump administration shut down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. Trump’s mandate rescinded a decades-old order enacted by former President Bill Clinton that federal agencies and recipients of federal money must provide language aid to non-English speakers. 

    “At the end of the day, there’s things that shouldn’t be politicized,” Rivera said.

    Of the millions of people living in the U.S. who don’t speak English at home, the vast majority speak Spanish, followed by Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Arabic. Now that the contract with Lilt has lapsed, it’ll be difficult to fulfill the Federal Communications Commission’s pre-Trump ruling on January 8 that wireless providers support emergency alerts in the 13 most common languages spoken in the U.S., said Trujillo Falcón, the researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

    The gap will have to be filled by doing translations by hand, or by using less accurate automated translations that can lead to confusion. Google Translate, for example, has been known to use “tornado clock” for “tornado watch” and grab the word for “hairbrush” for “brush fires” when translating English warnings to Spanish. Lilt, by contrast, trained its model specifically on weather-related terminologies to improve its accuracy.

    While urban areas might have news outlets like Telemundo or Univision that could help reach Spanish-speaking audiences, rural areas don’t typically have these resources, Trujillo Falcón said: “That’s often where a lot of multilingual communities go to work in factories and on farms. They won’t have access to this life-saving information whatsoever. And so that’s what truly worries me.” 

    It’s an issue even in states with a large population of Spanish speakers, like California. “It’s assumed that automatic translations of emergency information is commonplace and ubiquitous throughout California, but that’s not the case, particularly in our rural, agricultural areas where we have farmworkers and a large migrant population,” said Michael Méndez, a professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. 

    Méndez said that Spanish speakers have been targeted by misinformation during extreme weather. A study in November found that Latinos who use Spanish-language social media for news were more susceptible to false political narratives pertaining to natural disaster relief and other issues than those who use English-language media. The National Weather Service alerts were “an important tool for people to get the correct information, particularly now, from a trusted source that’s vetted,” Méndez said.

    Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, sees it only placing a “deeper burden” on local communities and states to fill in the gaps. In the days since the weather service contract news first broke, a smattering of local organizations across the country have already announced they will be doubling down on their work offering non-English emergency information. 

    But local and state disaster systems also tend to be riddled with issues concerning language access services. A Natural Hazards Center report released last year found that in hurricane hotspots like Florida, state- and county-level emergency management resources for those with limited English proficiency are scarce and inconsistent. All told, the lack of national multilingual emergency weather alerts “will have pretty deep ripple effects,” said Liebman. “It’s a life or death impact.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters. on Apr 14, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York City is making people compost — or pay up

    Property owners and landlords in New York City can now be fined $25 or more if residents are found throwing a banana peel in the trash. As of April 1, all New Yorkers must separate organic waste — that includes food scraps, food-soiled paper (like empty pizza boxes), and leaf and yard waste — from the rest of their trash, similar to how metal, glass, paper, and plastic is set aside for recycling. 

    This is how the city is encouraging — or indeed, mandating — participation in its curbside composting program, where food waste is collected weekly by the sanitation department, same as the trash and recycling. Mandatory curbside composting is still relatively new in New York City; the program only rolled out in all five boroughs late last year. 

    The best use of food, of course, is to feed people. When it can’t do that, composting is one tool to help reduce emissions from organic waste — the methane released as food decays in landfills is a major driver of global warming. As a whole, the United States wastes as much food as it did nearly 10 years ago, despite setting an ambitious goal to cut food waste in half. 

    Getting New Yorkers onboard with composting will take time — and effort. When it comes to diverting food waste from landfills by composting it instead, New York lags far behind other large U.S. cities. The city recovered less than 5 percent of eligible households’ organic waste in the 2024 fiscal year. The fines announced this month are designed to boost compliance; in the first week of April, the New York City Department of Sanitation, or DSNY, issued nearly 2,000 tickets for allegedly failing to separate organics.  

    “That is only half the story: We picked up 2.5 million pounds of compostable material last week,” said Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for DSNY, “a 240 percent increase over the 737,000 pounds collected during the same week last year.”

    But critics say the city should focus more on educating residents on the benefits of composting. 

    “My concern is that, instead of doing outreach, we’re focusing on fear-mongering,” said Lou Reyes, a local composting advocate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Reyes and his partner started a volunteer-run effort in Astoria, Queens, to collect and compost neighborhood food waste. He described the city’s recovery rate of organic waste prior to the rollout of fines as “pretty shameful.” 

    The lackluster participation in the city’s composting program may be a function of time — Seattle, for example, banned organics in the trash 10 years ago. In San Francisco, composting has been mandatory since 2009. 

    Still, experts say boosting food waste collection in New York, a metropolis with more than 8 million people, will also take dedicated education and outreach.

    “I would say our biggest tool that the department uses is education,” said Joseph Piasecki, the public affairs and policy coordinator for San Francisco’s environmental department. He mentioned that the city’s organics hauler works to notify residents and businesses of potential mix-ups before fining them. 

    “They will reach out, our department will reach out, we will call, we’ll put boots on the ground to go, like physically go, there, and be like, How can we help you be successful?” said Piasecki. 

    A worker walks past piles of yard waste at the New York City Department of Sanitation composting facility in Staten Island.
    A worker walks past piles of yard waste at the New York City Department of Sanitation composting facility in Staten Island. Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images

    At a preliminary budget hearing last month, DSNY said it has sent out citywide mailers about the composting fines; the department is also meeting with every community board and holding information sessions for residents and property managers to better educate the public about the program. And Piasecki stressed that San Francisco’s composting program should not serve as a direct comparison for New York’s. About 800,000 people live in San Francisco, roughly a tenth of the population of New York City. It also covers a much smaller geographic area: about 50 square miles compared to just over 300. A better comparison might be Los Angeles, a city of more than 3 million that just rolled out a mandatory curbside composting program two years ago.

    But adding to DSNY’s composting woes is that the agency has failed to reassure critics of the composting program, who argue the city is misleading residents about what happens to their food scraps while also creating an environmental justice issue.  

    As of now, food waste that gets picked up by DSNY will usually wind up in one of two places: a composting facility on Staten Island or a wastewater-treatment plant on the edge of Brooklyn and Queens. But last year, DSNY reported that only one-fifth of food waste collected actually makes it to the composting facility. The rest is sent to the wastewater-treatment plant in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. (Asked for updated figures, Gragnani said the department did not have a precise breakdown, as the numbers often fluctuate.) 

     At the wastewater-treatment plant, organic waste is mixed with sewage sludge and broken down in an anaerobic digester, where it produces methane and other gases. This cocktail of gases — known as biogas — can then serve multiple purposes: It can be used on-site to power the facility itself, or it could be refined into renewable natural gas and used to heat homes. Instead, the New York City plant has been blasted by locals for flaring off excess methane. 

    The solids leftover from this process — known as the digestate — could technically be used to enhance soils. However, advocates worry it may be too low-quality to be of any use to farmers and gardeners since it was originally mixed with city wastewater, which means it may ultimately end up in landfills, too. (Asked for comment, Gragnani directed Grist to New York state’s Department of Environmental Protection, which operates the digesters.) 

    In Los Angeles, the city’s guidance on curbside organics collection is clear about where it goes: Food scraps and yard waste collected are turned into compost that is then used by farmers to grow organic products. In San Francisco, according to Piasecki, some of the compost created by scraps is then used by Napa Valley wineries. He added that this could be a moment “for New York to develop that kind of story,” especially if compost from the city eventually helps rural communities throughout the state.

    A hauler moves a container of compostable materials in San Francisco, California.
    A hauler moves a container of compostable materials in San Francisco.
    Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

    For now, DSNY may have its hands full, answering to critics who say the anaerobic digestion process further entrenches the fossil fuel industry at a time when cities need instead to decarbonize.  

    For example, when biogas is converted into what’s known as renewable natural gas and then given to the local utility company for free, it’s “creating an incentive for rebuilding all the [gas] pipes and making the investments in this fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Eric Goldstein, the New York City environmental director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    Asked to respond to these criticisms, Gragnani, the press secretary for DSNY, said, “Would the ‘local environmental advocates’ you spoke with prefer that we use fracked gas to heat homes and businesses? Unfortunately, their rhetoric can discourage participation and send more food and yard waste to release methane in faraway landfills.”

    Anaerobic digestion can play an important role within food-waste reduction programs, said Marcel R. Howard, zero-waste program manager at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. But he added that it “must be implemented within zero-waste and social justice frameworks to prevent environmental harm and prioritize community needs.” 

    In the end, New York City has its work cut out for it. Reyes said that he wants to see “real, legitimate” outreach from DSNY on why separating food waste matters. “I am a huge supporter of municipal organic recovery that actually works,” he said. That means having the community actually buy into the idea of keeping food out of landfills and ensuring environmental justice issues — like flaring methane in a populous neighborhood — are not created in the process.

    “Those are, I think, more acceptable and more dignified solutions than the mess that we have in New York City,” he added.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York City is making people compost — or pay up on Apr 10, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Govt urged to act on food manufacturing

    The Albanese government is being urged to fund innovation precincts and shared manufacturing facilities in a new national effort on food and beverage production that an inquiry found has suffered under a policy quagmire and challenging conditions. After examining Australia’s food and beverage manufacturing for the last year, a lower house committee on Friday called…

    The post Govt urged to act on food manufacturing appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • New Co-op Financial Association For Southern Small Farmers

    East Point, Georgia – This past October, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (“the Federation”) joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other partners for the announcement of the historic launch of the Southern Farmers Financial Association (SFFA). This new cooperatively-owned institution was created to increase access to capital for its member-owners to begin farming or strengthen existing small farming operations and agriculture-based businesses in high-poverty areas across the Southeast.

    The post New Co-op Financial Association For Southern Small Farmers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • New Co-op Financial Association For Southern Small Farmers

    East Point, Georgia – This past October, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (“the Federation”) joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other partners for the announcement of the historic launch of the Southern Farmers Financial Association (SFFA). This new cooperatively-owned institution was created to increase access to capital for its member-owners to begin farming or strengthen existing small farming operations and agriculture-based businesses in high-poverty areas across the Southeast.

    The post New Co-op Financial Association For Southern Small Farmers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries

    With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP).

    The group is an economic powerhouse, including top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals.

    At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, 13 countries were invited to become BRICS partners, meaning they are on the path to full membership in the near future.

    Nine of these 13 nations accepted the invitation. The remaining four did not give a formal response as of the end of 2024. These were Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey/Türkiye, Vietnam.

    The post BRICS Expands With Nine New Partner Countries appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US Leaders Dragged Their Feet Fighting Bird Flu. Now We Risk Another Pandemic.

    Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack. But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How Trump could bring fish farms to the Gulf of Mexico

    Floating cages with fish by the thousands may be popping in the Gulf of Mexico under a controversial plan that was backed by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration four years ago and is likely to gain traction again after Trump begins his second term next month. 

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently identified five areas in the Gulf that the agency says strike a balance between the needs of the growing aquaculture industry and the potential impacts on the marine environment and elements of the seafood industry that depend on wild fisheries. 

    Identifying these “aquaculture opportunity areas” is part of a decade-long federal plan to open the Gulf and other offshore areas to aquaculture. The plan got a strong push from Trump but slowed under President Joe Biden’s administration, which concludes next month.  

    Three of NOAA’s preferred aquaculture areas are off the coast of Texas and one is south of Louisiana. Each area ranges from 500 to 2,000 acres and could total 6,500 acres. A fifth area, considered a possible alternative, has been identified near the mouth of the Mississippi River, but it would likely conflict with shipping traffic and shrimping in that area.

    The areas would open the Gulf for the first time to the large-scale cultivation of shellfish, finfish and seaweed. Seafood companies have long expressed interest in raising large, high-value species, including redfish and amberjack, in floating net pens several miles off the coasts of Louisiana, Texas and Florida.   

    A locator map showing four preferred and one possible alternative offshore aquaculture farm locations in the Gulf of Mexico (as identified by NOAA). The alternative location is off the southeast coast of LA, while the preferred locations are off the east coast of TX.
    The federal government is considering five locations for fish farms.

    Opponents say fish poop, fish feed and other organic debris that often swirls around offshore aquaculture operations will worsen the Gulf’s massive “dead zone,” a New Jersey-size area of low oxygen that pushes away fish and suffocates slow-moving crabs and other shellfish. Fish that escape from floating farms can spread diseases and parasites, gobble up food that supports other species, and potentially mate with their wild counterparts, introducing their domesticated genes, which tend to produce slower, dumber fish.  

    “When you think of all of these environmental impacts, it’s pretty concerning,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the New Orleans-based Recirculating Farms Coalition, a group opposed to offshore aquaculture. “Plus, we get super violent storms in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know how these (farms) won’t be damaged with fish escaping.”

    But the planet’s already-taxed wild fish stocks can’t meet the world’s expanding appetite for seafood alone, said Neil Anthony Sims, CEO of Ocean Era, an aquaculture company that hopes to develop a floating redfish farm 40 miles from Sarasota, Florida. His assertion is backed by a 2021 Stanford University study that predicted global fish consumption is likely to increase by 80 percent over the next 25 years. 

    “We can’t feed a planet with wild fish anymore than we could feed a planet with wild antelope,” Sims said. 

    Many fish, including tilapia and catfish, are raised in ponds and other land-based facilities. Floating fish farms in state-managed waters are increasingly rare. In 2022, Washington state effectively banned its once-thriving salmon farming industry after about 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon escaped from a net pen north of Puget Sound. Hawaii still hosts a floating fish farm that raises Hawaiian kampachi, a fish related to amberjack.

    Deeper waters managed by the federal government have remained aquaculture-free. 

    Like Trump, Biden backs opening federal waters to fish farming, but his administration has taken a more methodical approach, directing NOAA to study various areas that may be “environmentally, socially and economically viable” for supporting offshore aquaculture. 

    Trump was more forceful during his first term, signing an executive order in 2020 that was aimed at breaking through the regulatory barriers that have long impeded fish farming in federal waters. The Trump administration backed offshore aquaculture as a way to create jobs, broaden markets for U.S. companies and help meet growing demand for seafood. 

    A 2020 federal appeals court ruling blocked new regulations allowing offshore fish farming under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing fisheries since 1976. But other laws, including the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1980, give NOAA the authority to develop aquaculture opportunity areas and conduct environmental impact permitting for offshore farms. 

    The opportunity areas unveiled by NOAA last month set the stage for a final greenlight by Trump or Congress. The public can comment on the opportunity areas until Feb. 20. NOAA will host the first of three virtual meetings to gather feedback on the areas on Dec. 17.

    NOAA is also considering aquaculture opportunity areas in Southern California, but opposition is likely to be stiffer there than in the Gulf, where residents are already accustomed to heavily industrialized coastal waters, with thousands of offshore oil and gas structures near Louisiana and Texas and pipelines crisscrossing the seafloor. 

    But adding more industrial infrastructure will further crowd the Gulf’s first industry: fishing.

    “We’re already dealing with the rigs and oil wells and all kinds of debris,” said Acy Cooper, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. “And you want to put more out there? It’ll be our downfall.”

    The Gulf’s shrimping industry has been losing ground to imported shrimp, which is typically raised in farms in Asia and South America and is far cheaper than the wild-caught varieties. 

    Cooper, a third-generation shrimper in Plaquemines Parish, said America’s desire for seafood should be met by fishers rather than farmers. 

    “If you want fish, there’s a lot of fishermen here for you. We ready,” he said. 

    But NOAA isn’t so sure the U.S.’s wild fisheries can support the demand for seafood alone. About 80% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and about half of the imports are produced via foreign aquaculture. That’s giving rise to a “seafood trade deficit” that had grown to $17 billion in 2020, according to NOAA.  

    As much as U.S. fishers may want to meet demand, wild stocks are under increasing threat by climate change, which is altering marine species reproduction, feeding habits and distribution. 

    Offshore fish farming can help the U.S. adapt by producing seafood in a more controlled environment, according to NOAA. 

    “Aquaculture offers a pathway to grow climate resilience,” said Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries’ assistant administrator. “Identifying areas suitable for sustainable aquaculture is a forward-looking step toward climate-smart food systems.”

    But fish farms will likely worsen the dead zone, one of the Gulf’s main climate-related problems. The dead zone is fueled by agricultural runoff and other nutrient pollution that flushes into the Gulf from the Mississippi. Rising temperatures speed the growth of algae that feeds on the nutrients. When the massive algal blooms die, their decomposition robs the Gulf of oxygen. 

    Developing floating farms in and around the dead zone will add even more nutrients from poop and fish food that will nourish bigger blooms, Cufone said. 

    “We have warmer waters and all of the difficulties our fisheries are having because of climate change, but none of that supports an argument for factory fish farms,” she said. “If we care about climate change, we shouldn’t have them in our oceans.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump could bring fish farms to the Gulf of Mexico on Dec 11, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Baurick.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Don’t blame Biden for inflation. Blame the climate.

    Angela Bishop has been struggling with what she describes as “the cost of everything lately.” Groceries are one stressor, although she gets some reprieve from the free school lunches her four kids receive. Still, a few years of the stubbornly high cost of gas, utilities, and clothing have been pain points. 

    “We’ve just seen the prices before our eyes just skyrocket,” said Bishop, who is 39. She moved her family to Richmond, Virginia from California a few years ago to stop “living paycheck to paycheck,” but things have been so difficult lately she’s worried it won’t be long before they are once again barely getting by. 

    Families nationwide are dealing with similar financial struggles. Although inflation, defined as the rate at which average prices of goods or services rise over a given period, has slowed considerably since a record peak in 2022, consumer prices today have increased by more than 21 percent since February 2020. Frustration over rising cost of living drove many voters to support president-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on ending inflation. 

    Simply put, inflation was instrumental in determining how millions of Americans cast their ballots. Yet climate change, one of the primary levers behind inflationary pressures, wasn’t nearly as front of mind — just 37 percent of voters considered the issue “very important” to their vote. Bishop said that may have something to do with how difficult it can be to understand how extreme weather impacts all aspects of the economy. She knows that “climate change has something to do with inflation,” but isn’t sure exactly what. 

    In 2022, inflation reached 9% in the U.S. — the highest rate in over 40 years. That was part of a global trend. The lingering impacts of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and food export bans issued by a number of countries contributed to a cost of living crisis that pushed millions of people worldwide into poverty.

    Extreme weather shocks were another leading cause of escalating prices, said Alla Semenova, an economist at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “Climate change is an important part of the inflationary puzzle,” she said.

    In February of 2021, Winter Storm Uri slammed Texas, causing a deadly energy crisis statewide. It also caused widespread shutdowns at oil refineries that account for nearly three-quarters of U.S chemical production. This disrupted the production and distribution of things necessary for the production of plastics, which Semenova says contributed to ensuing price hikes for packaging, disinfectants, fertilizers and pesticides. 

    Food prices are another area where the inflationary pressure of warming has become obvious. A drought that engulfed the Mississippi River system in 2022 severely disrupted the transportation of crops used for cattle feed, increasing shipping and commodity costs for livestock producers. Those added costs were likely absorbed by consumers buying meat and dairy products. Grain prices jumped around the same time because drought-induced supply shortages and high energy prices pushed up the costs of fertilizer, transportation, and agricultural production. Not long after, lettuce prices soared amid shortages that followed flooding across California, and the price of orange juice skyrocketed after drought and a hurricane hit major production regions in Florida. 

    Though overall inflation has cooled considerably since then, the economic pressures extreme weather places on food costs persist. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that weather disruptions drove global food prices to an 18-month high in October. In fact, cocoa prices surged almost 40 percent this year because of supply shortages wrought by drier conditions in West and Central Africa, where about three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is cultivated. This can not only impact the price tag of chocolate, but also health supplements, cosmetics, and fragrances, among other goods that rely on cocoa beans. 

    “What we have seen, especially this year, is this massive price spike,” due to abnormal weather patterns, said Rodrigo Cárcamo-Díaz, a senior economist at U.N. Trade and Development. 

    But the impact on consumers “goes beyond” the Consumer Price Indicator, which is the most widely used measure of inflation, said Cárcamo-Díaz. His point is simple: Lower-income households are most affected by supply shocks that inflate the price of goods as increasingly volatile weather makes prices more volatile, straining households with tighter budgets because it can take time for wages to catch up to steeper costs of living. 

    Rising prices are expected to become even more of an issue as temperatures climb and extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe. In fact, a 2024 study found that heat extremes driven by climate change enhanced headline inflation for 121 countries over the last 30 years, with warming temperatures expected to increase global inflation by as much as 1 percent every year until 2035. Lead researcher and climate scientist Maximilian Kotz noted that general goods, or any physical things that can be bought, broadly experienced “strong inflationary effects from rising temperatures.” 

    Electricity is already getting more expensive as higher temperatures and disasters strain grids and damage infrastructure, driving higher rates of utility shutoff for lower-income U.S. households. Without significant emission reductions, and monetary policies set by central banks and governments to mitigate the financial impacts of climate change by stabilizing prices, this inequitable burden is slated to get much worse. Severe floods derailing major production regions for consumer electronics and auto parts have recently disrupted global supply chains and escalated costs for things car ownership in the U.S. Persistent climate shocks have even triggered an enormous increase in the cost of home insurance premiums.

    All told, the inflationary impact of climate change on cost of living is here to stay and will continue to strain American budgets, said Semenova. “The era of relatively low and stable prices is over,” she said. “Costs have been rising due to climate change. It’s the new normal.”

    That’s bad news for families like the Bishops, who are simply trying to get by. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Don’t blame Biden for inflation. Blame the climate. on Dec 5, 2024.

    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

  • Techno-Feudalism or Food Sovereignty?

    The control of global agriculture has long been a tentacle of US state-corporate geopolitical strategy. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests, and poorer nations adopted Western agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development. It resulted in trapping nations into a globalised system of debt bondage, rigged trade relations and a system vulnerable to oil price shocks and manipulation.

    In his book The Unsettling of America (1977), Wendell Berry criticises the US Department of Agriculture for adopting a doctrine that treats food as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. Berry argues that treating food as a weapon ultimately serves the interests of large agribusiness corporations rather than farmers or consumers.

    In effect, the weaponisation of food is part of a larger problem where agriculture is divorced from its cultural and ecological roots, leading to numerous negative consequences. Berry’s book discusses how modern agriculture has fostered a disconnect between people and the land. He laments that farming has been reduced to a mere business venture rather than a way of life that nurtures community and culture. 

     A business venture and a geopolitical weapon.

    Something not lost on environmentalist Vandana Shiva who does not hesitate to label agrochemical companies as a poison cartel. She emphasises that this designation stems not only from the harmful effects of its chemicals on the food system but also from the historical connections of corporations like Bayer and BASF to warfare and chemical weapons. These companies have roots in producing toxic substances used during conflicts, including World War I and II, where they manufactured chemical agents such as chlorine gas and Zyklon B, the latter infamously used in Nazi gas chambers.

    These practices reflect a broader underlining (historical) pattern of exploitation and violence in the food system that undermines both human health and ecological integrity. Major agribusiness companies are deeply embedded in supranational policymaking machinery that allows them to draw up policies to serve their own interests. For instance, Monsanto played a key part in drafting the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to create seed monopolies.

    The powerful agribusiness lobby has secured privileged access to policy makers to ensure its model of agriculture prevails. And those same companies also profit from destruction and war and sovereign debt traps to gain access to markets (see, for instance, Sowing the Seeds ofFamine in Ethiopia by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky).

    Food cultivation — an endeavour that at its core seeks to nourish and sustain life — has been hijacked and weaponised to coerce, control and suck away life from nature and people. 

    And the top man of Bayer in India recently spoke about ‘backwardness’ ‘development’ and Indian agriculture, as if any of the above is progressive. But few illusions are as pervasive and pernicious as the ideology of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ that hides behind corporate lobbyist soundbites about agribusiness and its money-spinning inputs being needed to prevent mass starvation. 

    This ideology, propped up by the twin pillars of techno-solutionism and technocracy, has become the unquestioned truth of the age, a secular religion that promises salvation through the relentless march of technology and the wisdom of experts. 

     Writer Paul Cudenec says that ‘development’: 

     … is the destruction of nature, now seen as a mere resource to be used for development or as an empty undeveloped space in which development could, should and, ultimately, must take place. It is the destruction of natural human communities, whose self-sufficiency gets in the way of the advance of development, and of authentic human culture and traditional values, which are incompatible with the dogma and domination of development.

     Cudenec argues that those behind ‘development’ have been destroying everything of real value in our natural world and our human societies in the pursuit of personal wealth and power. Moreover, they have concealed this crime behind all the positive-sounding rhetoric associated with development on every level. 

     Indeed, the notion that human society is on an inevitable trajectory of improvement, driven by technological innovation and profit, is perhaps the most insidious myth of our time. This narrative of perpetual progress is a convenient smokescreen, obscuring the stark realities of environmental degradation, social inequality, spiralling rates of food-related illness and spiritual impoverishment that characterise so-called advanced civilisation. 

     At the heart of this ideology lies the naive belief in techno-solutionism — the misguided faith that every problem, no matter how complex or deeply rooted in social and political structures, can be solved with the right technological fix. This reductionist worldview reduces the human experience to a series of technical challenges, eagerly awaiting the next groundbreaking innovation to set things right. 

     This simplistic approach not only fails to address the root causes of our predicaments but actively distracts us from the necessary work of systemic change and collective action. 

     Hand in hand with techno-solutionism marches technocracy — the idea that society would be best governed by the rich, technical experts and engineers rather than elected representatives or, just imagine, ordinary people! This elitist vision of governance places undue faith in the objectivity and benevolence of a technocratic, ‘stakeholder-capitalist’ class.

    The technocratic mindset reduces the vibrant reality of human society to a series of data points and algorithms, treating citizens as variables in a grand social engineering experiment. A worldview that values efficiency over empathy, optimisation over justice and control over freedom. In this brave new world, the nuances of culture, the wisdom of tradition and the unpredictability of human nature are seen as inconvenient obstacles to be overcome rather than essential aspects of the human experience.

    Proponents of this ideology of progress would have us believe that we’re living in the best of all possible worlds — or at least on the path to it with the proliferation of gadgets as irrefutable evidence of our ascent. But this narrative of continuous improvement conveniently ignores the widening wealth gap, corporate corruption, the epidemic of mental health issues, the erosion of community ties and a globalised food system that results in all manner of illness and environmental degradation.

    The obsession with technological progress and economic growth has come at a tremendous cost. Elite interests have sacrificed the health of the planet, the well-being of countless species and our own connection to the natural world on the altar of ‘development’. They traded meaningful work and genuine human connections for the hollow notion of convenience and efficiency and power and profit.

    The ideology of progress serves as a powerful tool for maintaining the status quo. By perpetuating the myth that our current corrupt system is the pinnacle of human achievement, or at least the best we can hope for (there is no alternative!) stifles imagination and is meant to induce apathy and demotivate the masses in striving to bring about meaningful change. And those who dare to propose alternative models of social organisation are censored or dismissed as naive idealists or dangerous radicals.

    The tech giants and corporations that benefit most from this ideology have become the new high priests of our age, peddling their digital opiates and shiny gadgets as the path to a better future. They promise connection but deliver isolation, offer information but breed confusion and pledge empowerment while tightening the public noose of surveillance.

    The Green Revolution, once hailed as the saviour of the ‘developing world’, has instead trapped millions of farmers in cycles of debt and dependency, while reducing the nutritional value of food and decimating biodiversity.

    Now, we are told that the solution to current problems lies in even more technology — gene editing, precision agriculture and artificial intelligence. But this is merely doubling down on a failed paradigm. These ‘solutions’ are not designed to address the root causes of our food crisis but rather to further consolidate control over the food system in the hands of a few powerful corporations.

    Consider the push for genetically modified organisms and the new wave of gene-edited crops. Proponents claim these technologies will increase yields and reduce pesticide use. Yet, decades of cultivation of genetically modified organisms have shown us that these promises are hollow. Instead, we have seen the rise of superweeds, increased pesticide use and the erosion of seed sovereignty as farmers become beholden to patent-holding corporations.

    Similarly, the drive towards ‘smart’ farming and precision agriculture is often presented as a path to sustainability. In reality, it’s a trojan horse for increased corporate control and farmer disempowerment. As farms become more reliant on proprietary software, expensive machinery and data-driven decision making, traditional farming knowledge is devalued, and farmers are reduced to mere operators in a system they no longer fully understand or control.

    The solution lies in a return to human-scale agriculture, rooted in agroecological principles. This is not a romanticised view of the past but a forward-thinking approach that recognises the wisdom embedded in traditional farming practices while selectively incorporating appropriate, open-access technologies.

    Moreover, the push for lab-grown meat and ultra-processed, plant-based alternatives is not about sustainability or animal welfare but about wresting control of protein production from farmers and placing it in the hands of tech companies and their investors. These products, often marketed as eco-friendly solutions, are in reality energy-intensive, highly processed foods that further disconnect us from the natural world and our food sources.

    In the face of this techno-industrial onslaught, we must advocate for food sovereignty — the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. This means resisting the corporatisation of our food supply, supporting local food systems and preserving the diversity of crops and culinary traditions that have nourished humanity for millennia.

  • This is an extract from the author’s new book Power Play: The Future of Food (Global Research, 2024). It is the third book in a series of open-access ebooks on the global food system by the author. It can be read here. Colin Todhunter is an independent researcher and writer.
    • The post Techno-Feudalism or Food Sovereignty? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Queer Farmers Are Working to Transform Our Food Systems — and Paying a Price

    The journey that led Anita Adalja, a 42-year-old queer South Asian farmer, to enter the agricultural field began when they were 25, living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Adalja worked as a social worker in supportive housing, trying to finish graduate school, and felt like they were in over their head. Along with their coworkers, they would often go to the roof of the supportive housing building…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Corporate Vision for the Future of Food

    Sainsbury’s is one of the ‘big six’ supermarkets in the UK. In 2019, it released its Future of Food report. It is not merely a misguided attempt at forecasting future trends and habits; it reads more like a manifesto for corporate control and technocratic tyranny disguised as ‘progress’. This document epitomises everything wrong with the industrial food system’s vision for our future. It represents a dystopian roadmap to a world where our most fundamental connection to nature and culture — our food — is hijacked by corporate interests and mediated through a maze of unnecessary and potentially harmful technologies. 

    The wild predictions and technological ‘solutions’ presented in the report reveal a profound disconnection from the lived experiences of ordinary people and the real challenges facing our food systems. Its claim (in 2019) that a quarter of Britons will be vegetarian by 2025 seems way off the mark. But it fits a narrative that seeks to reshape our diets and food culture. Once you convince the reader that things are going to be a certain way in the future, it is easier to pave the way for normalising what appears elsewhere in the report: lab-grown meat, 3D-printed foods and space farming.  

    Of course, the underlying assumption is that giant corporations — and supermarkets like Sainsbury’s — will be controlling everything and rolling out marvellous ‘innovations’ under the guise of ‘feeding the world’ or ‘saving the planet’. There is no concern expressed in the report about the consolidation of corporate-technocratic control over the food system.  

    By promoting high-tech solutions, the report seemingly advocates for a future where our food supply is entirely dependent on complex technologies controlled by a handful of corporations. 

    The report talks of ‘artisan factories’ run by robots. Is this meant to get ordinary people to buy into Sainsbury’s vision of the future? Possibly, if the intention is to further alienate people from their food sources, making them ever more dependent on corporate-controlled, ultra-processed products.  

    It’s a future where the art of cooking, the joy of growing food and the cultural significance of traditional dishes are replaced by sterile, automated processes devoid of human touch and cultural meaning. This erosion of food culture and skills is not an unintended consequence — it’s a core feature of the corporate food system’s strategy to create a captive market of consumers unable to feed themselves without corporate intervention. 

    The report’s enthusiasm for personalised nutrition driven by AI and biometric data is akin to an Orwellian scenario that would give corporations unprecedented control over our dietary choices, turning the most fundamental human need into a data-mined, algorithm-driven commodity.  

    The privacy implications are staggering, as is the potential for new forms of discrimination and social control based on eating habits. Imagine a world where your insurance premiums are tied to your adherence to a corporate-prescribed diet or where your employment prospects are influenced by your ‘Food ID’. The possible dystopian reality lurking behind Sainsbury’s glossy predictions. 

    The report’s fixation on exotic ingredients like jellyfish and lichen draws attention away from the real issues affecting our food systems — corporate concentration, environmental degradation and the systematic destruction of local food cultures and economies. It would be better to address the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition, which are fundamentally issues of poverty and inequality, not a lack of novel food sources.  

    Nothing is mentioned about the vital role of agroecology, traditional farming knowledge and food sovereignty in creating truly sustainable and just food systems. Instead, what we see is a future where every aspect of our diet is mediated by technology and corporate interests, from gene-edited crops to synthetic biology-derived foods. A direct assault on the principles of food sovereignty, which assert the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods. 

    The report’s emphasis on lab-grown meat and other high-tech protein sources is particularly troubling. These technologies, far from being the environmental saviours they are promoted as, risk increasing energy use and further centralising food production in the hands of a few tech giants.  

    The massive energy requirements for large-scale cultured meat production are conveniently glossed over, as are the potential health risks of consuming these novel foods without long-term safety studies. This push for synthetic foods is not about sustainability or animal welfare — it’s about creating new, patentable food sources that can be controlled and monetised by corporations. 

    Moreover, the push for synthetic foods and ‘precision fermentation’ threatens to destroy the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and pastoralists worldwide, replacing them with a handful of high-tech facilities controlled by multinational corporations.  

    Is this meant to be ‘progress’?  

    It’s more like a boardroom recipe for increased food insecurity, rural poverty and corporate monopolisation. The destruction of traditional farming communities and practices would not only be an economic disaster but a cultural catastrophe, erasing millennia of accumulated knowledge and wisdom about sustainable food production. 

    The report’s casual mention of ‘sin taxes’ on meat signals a future where our dietary choices are increasingly policed and penalised by the state, likely at the behest of corporate interests.  

    The Issue of Meat 

    However, on the issue of the need to reduce meat consumption and replace meat with laboratory-manufactured items in order to reduce carbon emissions, it must be stated that the dramatic increase in the amount of meat consumed post-1945 was not necessarily the result of consumer preference; it had more to do with political policy, the mechanisation of agriculture and Green Revolution practices.  

    That much was made clear by Laila Kassam, who, in her 2017 article What’s grain got to do with it? How the problem of surplus grain was solved by increasing ‘meat’ consumption in post-WWII US, asked: 

    Have you ever wondered how ‘meat’ became such a central part of the Western diet? Or how the industrialisation of ‘animal agriculture’ came about? It might seem like the natural outcome of the ‘free market’ meeting demand for more ‘meat’. But from what I have learned from Nibert (2002) and Winders and Nibert (2004), the story of how ‘meat’ consumption increased so much in the post-World War II period is anything but natural. They argue it is largely due to a decision in the 1940s by the US government to deal with the problem of surplus grain by increasing the production of ‘meat’.

    Kassam notes:  

    In the second half of the 20th century, global ‘meat’ production increased by nearly 5 times. The amount of ‘meat’ eaten per person doubled. By 2050 ‘meat’ consumption is estimated to increase by 160 percent (The World Counts, 2017). While global per capita ‘meat’ consumption is currently 43 kg/year, it is nearly double in the UK (82 kg/year) and almost triple in the US (118 kg/year).

    Kassam notes that habits and desires are manipulated by elite groups for their own interests. Propaganda, advertising and ‘public relations’ are used to manufacture demand for products. Agribusiness corporations and the state have used these techniques to encourage ‘meat’ consumption, leading to the slaughter and untold misery of billions of creatures, as Kassam makes clear. 

    People were manipulated to buy into ‘meat culture’. Now they are being manipulated to buy out, again by elite groups. But ‘sin taxes’ and Orwellian-type controls on individual behaviour are not the way to go about reducing meat consumption.  

    So, what is the answer? 

    Kassam says that one way to do this is to support grassroots organisations and movements which are working to resist the power of global agribusiness and reclaim our food systems. Movements for food justice and food sovereignty which promote sustainable, agroecological production systems.  

    At least then people will be free from corporate manipulation and better placed to make their own food choices. 

    As Kassam says: 

    “From what I have learned so far, our oppression of other animals is not just a result of individual choices. It is underpinned by a state supported economic system driven by profit.”  

    Misplaced Priorities 

    Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s vision of food production in space and on other planets is perhaps the most egregious example of misplaced priorities. While around a billion struggle with hunger and malnutrition and many more with micronutrient deficiencies, corporate futurists are fantasising about growing food on Mars.  

    Is this supposed to be visionary thinking? 

    It’s a perfect encapsulation of the technocratic mindset that believes every problem can be solved with more technology, no matter how impractical or divorced from reality. 

    Moreover, by promoting a future dependent on complex, centralised technologies, we become increasingly vulnerable to system failures and corporate monopolies. A truly resilient food system should be decentralised, diverse and rooted in local knowledge and resources.  

    The report’s emphasis on nutrient delivery through implants, patches and intravenous methods is particularly disturbing. This represents the ultimate commodification of nutrition, reducing food to mere fuel and stripping away all cultural, social and sensory aspects of eating. It’s a vision that treats the human body as a machine to be optimised, rather than a living being with complex needs and experiences.  

    The idea of ‘grow-your-own’ ingredients for cultured meat and other synthetic foods at home is another example of how this technocratic vision co-opts and perverts concepts of self-sufficiency and local food production. Instead of encouraging people to grow real, whole foods, it proposes a dystopian parody of home food production that still keeps consumers dependent on corporate-supplied technologies and inputs. A clever marketing ploy to make synthetic foods seem more natural and acceptable. 

    The report’s predictions about AI-driven personal nutrition advisors and highly customised diets based on individual ‘Food IDs’ raise serious privacy concerns and threaten to further medicalise our relationship with food. While personalised nutrition could offer some benefits, the level of data collection and analysis required for such systems could lead to unprecedented corporate control over our dietary choices.  

    Furthermore, the emphasis on ‘artisan’ factories run by robots completely misunderstands the nature of artisanal food production. True artisanal foods are the product of human skill, creativity and cultural knowledge passed down through generations. It’s a perfect example of how the technocratic mindset reduces everything to mere processes that can be automated, ignoring the human and cultural elements that give food its true value. 

    The report’s vision of meat ‘assembled’ on 3D printing belts is another disturbing example of the ultra-processed future being proposed. This approach to food production treats nutrition as a mere assembly of nutrients, ignoring the complex interactions between whole foods and the human body. It’s a continuation of the reductionist thinking that has led to the current epidemic of diet-related diseases.  

    Sainsbury’s is essentially advocating for a future where our diets are even further removed from natural, whole foods. 

    The concept of ‘farms’ cultivating plants to make growth serum for cells is yet another step towards the complete artificialisation of the food supply. This approach further distances food production from natural processes. It’s a vision of farming that has more in common with pharmaceutical production than traditional agriculture, and it threatens to complete the transformation of food from a natural resource into an industrial product. 

    Sainsbury’s apparent enthusiasm for gene-edited and synthetic biology-derived foods is also concerning. These technologies’ rapid adoption without thorough long-term safety studies and public debate could lead to unforeseen health and environmental impacts. The history of agricultural biotechnology is rife with examples of unintended consequences, from the development of herbicide-resistant superweeds to the contamination of non-GM crops.  

    Is Sainsbury’s uncritically promoting these technologies, disregarding the precautionary principle?   

    Issues like food insecurity, malnutrition and environmental degradation are not primarily technical problems — they are the result of inequitable distribution of resources, exploitative economic systems and misguided policies. By framing these issues as purely technological challenges, Sainsbury’s is diverting attention from the need for systemic change and social justice in the food system. 

    The high-tech solutions proposed are likely to be accessible only to the wealthy, at least initially, creating a two-tiered food system where the rich have access to ‘optimized’ nutrition while the poor are left with increasingly degraded and processed options.  

    But the report’s apparent disregard for the cultural and social aspects of food is perhaps its most fundamental flaw. Food is not merely fuel for our bodies; it’s a central part of our cultural identities, social relationships and connection to the natural world. By reducing food to a series of nutrients to be optimised and delivered in the most efficient manner possible, Sainsbury’s is proposing a future that is not only less healthy but less human. 

    While Sainsbury’s Future of Food report can be regarded as a roadmap to a better future, it is really a corporate wish list, representing a dangerous consolidation of power in the hands of agribusiness giants and tech companies at the expense of farmers, consumers and the environment.  

    The report is symptomatic of a wider ideology that seeks to legitimise total corporate control over our food supply. And the result? A homogenised, tech-driven dystopia. 

    A technocratic nightmare that gives no regard for implementing food systems that are truly democratic, ecologically sound and rooted in the needs and knowledge of local communities.  

    The real future of food lies not in corporate labs and AI algorithms, but in the fields of agroecological farmers, the kitchens of home cooks and the markets of local food producers.  

    The path forward is not through more technology and corporate control but through a return to the principles of agroecology, food sovereignty and cultural diversity.  

  • This is an extract from the author’s new book Power Play: The Future of Food (Global Research, 2024). It is the third book in a series of open-access ebooks on the global food system by the author. It can be read here. Colin Todhunter is an independent researcher and writer.
    • The post Corporate Vision for the Future of Food first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Corporate Vision for the Future of Food

    Sainsbury’s is one of the ‘big six’ supermarkets in the UK. In 2019, it released its Future of Food report. It is not merely a misguided attempt at forecasting future trends and habits; it reads more like a manifesto for corporate control and technocratic tyranny disguised as ‘progress’. This document epitomises everything wrong with the industrial food system’s vision for our future. It represents a dystopian roadmap to a world where our most fundamental connection to nature and culture — our food — is hijacked by corporate interests and mediated through a maze of unnecessary and potentially harmful technologies. 

    The wild predictions and technological ‘solutions’ presented in the report reveal a profound disconnection from the lived experiences of ordinary people and the real challenges facing our food systems. Its claim (in 2019) that a quarter of Britons will be vegetarian by 2025 seems way off the mark. But it fits a narrative that seeks to reshape our diets and food culture. Once you convince the reader that things are going to be a certain way in the future, it is easier to pave the way for normalising what appears elsewhere in the report: lab-grown meat, 3D-printed foods and space farming.  

    Of course, the underlying assumption is that giant corporations — and supermarkets like Sainsbury’s — will be controlling everything and rolling out marvellous ‘innovations’ under the guise of ‘feeding the world’ or ‘saving the planet’. There is no concern expressed in the report about the consolidation of corporate-technocratic control over the food system.  

    By promoting high-tech solutions, the report seemingly advocates for a future where our food supply is entirely dependent on complex technologies controlled by a handful of corporations. 

    The report talks of ‘artisan factories’ run by robots. Is this meant to get ordinary people to buy into Sainsbury’s vision of the future? Possibly, if the intention is to further alienate people from their food sources, making them ever more dependent on corporate-controlled, ultra-processed products.  

    It’s a future where the art of cooking, the joy of growing food and the cultural significance of traditional dishes are replaced by sterile, automated processes devoid of human touch and cultural meaning. This erosion of food culture and skills is not an unintended consequence — it’s a core feature of the corporate food system’s strategy to create a captive market of consumers unable to feed themselves without corporate intervention. 

    The report’s enthusiasm for personalised nutrition driven by AI and biometric data is akin to an Orwellian scenario that would give corporations unprecedented control over our dietary choices, turning the most fundamental human need into a data-mined, algorithm-driven commodity.  

    The privacy implications are staggering, as is the potential for new forms of discrimination and social control based on eating habits. Imagine a world where your insurance premiums are tied to your adherence to a corporate-prescribed diet or where your employment prospects are influenced by your ‘Food ID’. The possible dystopian reality lurking behind Sainsbury’s glossy predictions. 

    The report’s fixation on exotic ingredients like jellyfish and lichen draws attention away from the real issues affecting our food systems — corporate concentration, environmental degradation and the systematic destruction of local food cultures and economies. It would be better to address the root causes of food insecurity and malnutrition, which are fundamentally issues of poverty and inequality, not a lack of novel food sources.  

    Nothing is mentioned about the vital role of agroecology, traditional farming knowledge and food sovereignty in creating truly sustainable and just food systems. Instead, what we see is a future where every aspect of our diet is mediated by technology and corporate interests, from gene-edited crops to synthetic biology-derived foods. A direct assault on the principles of food sovereignty, which assert the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods. 

    The report’s emphasis on lab-grown meat and other high-tech protein sources is particularly troubling. These technologies, far from being the environmental saviours they are promoted as, risk increasing energy use and further centralising food production in the hands of a few tech giants.  

    The massive energy requirements for large-scale cultured meat production are conveniently glossed over, as are the potential health risks of consuming these novel foods without long-term safety studies. This push for synthetic foods is not about sustainability or animal welfare — it’s about creating new, patentable food sources that can be controlled and monetised by corporations. 

    Moreover, the push for synthetic foods and ‘precision fermentation’ threatens to destroy the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and pastoralists worldwide, replacing them with a handful of high-tech facilities controlled by multinational corporations.  

    Is this meant to be ‘progress’?  

    It’s more like a boardroom recipe for increased food insecurity, rural poverty and corporate monopolisation. The destruction of traditional farming communities and practices would not only be an economic disaster but a cultural catastrophe, erasing millennia of accumulated knowledge and wisdom about sustainable food production. 

    The report’s casual mention of ‘sin taxes’ on meat signals a future where our dietary choices are increasingly policed and penalised by the state, likely at the behest of corporate interests.  

    The Issue of Meat 

    However, on the issue of the need to reduce meat consumption and replace meat with laboratory-manufactured items in order to reduce carbon emissions, it must be stated that the dramatic increase in the amount of meat consumed post-1945 was not necessarily the result of consumer preference; it had more to do with political policy, the mechanisation of agriculture and Green Revolution practices.  

    That much was made clear by Laila Kassam, who, in her 2017 article What’s grain got to do with it? How the problem of surplus grain was solved by increasing ‘meat’ consumption in post-WWII US, asked: 

    Have you ever wondered how ‘meat’ became such a central part of the Western diet? Or how the industrialisation of ‘animal agriculture’ came about? It might seem like the natural outcome of the ‘free market’ meeting demand for more ‘meat’. But from what I have learned from Nibert (2002) and Winders and Nibert (2004), the story of how ‘meat’ consumption increased so much in the post-World War II period is anything but natural. They argue it is largely due to a decision in the 1940s by the US government to deal with the problem of surplus grain by increasing the production of ‘meat’.

    Kassam notes:  

    In the second half of the 20th century, global ‘meat’ production increased by nearly 5 times. The amount of ‘meat’ eaten per person doubled. By 2050 ‘meat’ consumption is estimated to increase by 160 percent (The World Counts, 2017). While global per capita ‘meat’ consumption is currently 43 kg/year, it is nearly double in the UK (82 kg/year) and almost triple in the US (118 kg/year).

    Kassam notes that habits and desires are manipulated by elite groups for their own interests. Propaganda, advertising and ‘public relations’ are used to manufacture demand for products. Agribusiness corporations and the state have used these techniques to encourage ‘meat’ consumption, leading to the slaughter and untold misery of billions of creatures, as Kassam makes clear. 

    People were manipulated to buy into ‘meat culture’. Now they are being manipulated to buy out, again by elite groups. But ‘sin taxes’ and Orwellian-type controls on individual behaviour are not the way to go about reducing meat consumption.  

    So, what is the answer? 

    Kassam says that one way to do this is to support grassroots organisations and movements which are working to resist the power of global agribusiness and reclaim our food systems. Movements for food justice and food sovereignty which promote sustainable, agroecological production systems.  

    At least then people will be free from corporate manipulation and better placed to make their own food choices. 

    As Kassam says: 

    “From what I have learned so far, our oppression of other animals is not just a result of individual choices. It is underpinned by a state supported economic system driven by profit.”  

    Misplaced Priorities 

    Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s vision of food production in space and on other planets is perhaps the most egregious example of misplaced priorities. While around a billion struggle with hunger and malnutrition and many more with micronutrient deficiencies, corporate futurists are fantasising about growing food on Mars.  

    Is this supposed to be visionary thinking? 

    It’s a perfect encapsulation of the technocratic mindset that believes every problem can be solved with more technology, no matter how impractical or divorced from reality. 

    Moreover, by promoting a future dependent on complex, centralised technologies, we become increasingly vulnerable to system failures and corporate monopolies. A truly resilient food system should be decentralised, diverse and rooted in local knowledge and resources.  

    The report’s emphasis on nutrient delivery through implants, patches and intravenous methods is particularly disturbing. This represents the ultimate commodification of nutrition, reducing food to mere fuel and stripping away all cultural, social and sensory aspects of eating. It’s a vision that treats the human body as a machine to be optimised, rather than a living being with complex needs and experiences.  

    The idea of ‘grow-your-own’ ingredients for cultured meat and other synthetic foods at home is another example of how this technocratic vision co-opts and perverts concepts of self-sufficiency and local food production. Instead of encouraging people to grow real, whole foods, it proposes a dystopian parody of home food production that still keeps consumers dependent on corporate-supplied technologies and inputs. A clever marketing ploy to make synthetic foods seem more natural and acceptable. 

    The report’s predictions about AI-driven personal nutrition advisors and highly customised diets based on individual ‘Food IDs’ raise serious privacy concerns and threaten to further medicalise our relationship with food. While personalised nutrition could offer some benefits, the level of data collection and analysis required for such systems could lead to unprecedented corporate control over our dietary choices.  

    Furthermore, the emphasis on ‘artisan’ factories run by robots completely misunderstands the nature of artisanal food production. True artisanal foods are the product of human skill, creativity and cultural knowledge passed down through generations. It’s a perfect example of how the technocratic mindset reduces everything to mere processes that can be automated, ignoring the human and cultural elements that give food its true value. 

    The report’s vision of meat ‘assembled’ on 3D printing belts is another disturbing example of the ultra-processed future being proposed. This approach to food production treats nutrition as a mere assembly of nutrients, ignoring the complex interactions between whole foods and the human body. It’s a continuation of the reductionist thinking that has led to the current epidemic of diet-related diseases.  

    Sainsbury’s is essentially advocating for a future where our diets are even further removed from natural, whole foods. 

    The concept of ‘farms’ cultivating plants to make growth serum for cells is yet another step towards the complete artificialisation of the food supply. This approach further distances food production from natural processes. It’s a vision of farming that has more in common with pharmaceutical production than traditional agriculture, and it threatens to complete the transformation of food from a natural resource into an industrial product. 

    Sainsbury’s apparent enthusiasm for gene-edited and synthetic biology-derived foods is also concerning. These technologies’ rapid adoption without thorough long-term safety studies and public debate could lead to unforeseen health and environmental impacts. The history of agricultural biotechnology is rife with examples of unintended consequences, from the development of herbicide-resistant superweeds to the contamination of non-GM crops.  

    Is Sainsbury’s uncritically promoting these technologies, disregarding the precautionary principle?   

    Issues like food insecurity, malnutrition and environmental degradation are not primarily technical problems — they are the result of inequitable distribution of resources, exploitative economic systems and misguided policies. By framing these issues as purely technological challenges, Sainsbury’s is diverting attention from the need for systemic change and social justice in the food system. 

    The high-tech solutions proposed are likely to be accessible only to the wealthy, at least initially, creating a two-tiered food system where the rich have access to ‘optimized’ nutrition while the poor are left with increasingly degraded and processed options.  

    But the report’s apparent disregard for the cultural and social aspects of food is perhaps its most fundamental flaw. Food is not merely fuel for our bodies; it’s a central part of our cultural identities, social relationships and connection to the natural world. By reducing food to a series of nutrients to be optimised and delivered in the most efficient manner possible, Sainsbury’s is proposing a future that is not only less healthy but less human. 

    While Sainsbury’s Future of Food report can be regarded as a roadmap to a better future, it is really a corporate wish list, representing a dangerous consolidation of power in the hands of agribusiness giants and tech companies at the expense of farmers, consumers and the environment.  

    The report is symptomatic of a wider ideology that seeks to legitimise total corporate control over our food supply. And the result? A homogenised, tech-driven dystopia. 

    A technocratic nightmare that gives no regard for implementing food systems that are truly democratic, ecologically sound and rooted in the needs and knowledge of local communities.  

    The real future of food lies not in corporate labs and AI algorithms, but in the fields of agroecological farmers, the kitchens of home cooks and the markets of local food producers.  

    The path forward is not through more technology and corporate control but through a return to the principles of agroecology, food sovereignty and cultural diversity.  

  • This is an extract from the author’s new book Power Play: The Future of Food (Global Research, 2024). It is the third book in a series of open-access ebooks on the global food system by the author. It can be read here. Colin Todhunter is an independent researcher and writer.
    • The post Corporate Vision for the Future of Food first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In 1649…

    This is an extract from the author’s new book Power Play: The Future of Food.

    In the annals of agrarian history, one particular movement has left a profound impact on the collective imagination of food sovereignty advocates. The Diggers in 17th century England were led by the visionary Gerrard Winstanley. This radical group emerged during a period of intense social and political upheaval, offering a revolutionary perspective on land ownership and food production that continues to resonate with modern struggles for (food) justice.

    The Diggers, also known as the True Levellers, arose in 1649, a time when England was reeling from the aftermath of civil war. Winstanley and his followers dared to imagine a different world. The group challenged the very foundations of the emerging capitalist system and the enclosure movement that was rapidly privatising previously common lands. But Winstanley’s vision was not merely theoretical.

    On 1 April 1649, the Diggers began their most famous action, occupying St. George’s Hill in Surrey, where they established a commune, cultivating the land collectively and distributing food freely to all who needed it. This act of direct action was a powerful demonstration of their philosophy in practice.

    As Winstanley declared:

    “The earth was made to be a common treasury for all, not a private treasury for some.”

    The Diggers, true to their name, began their movement by literally digging up unused common lands and planting crops. According to Professor Justin Champion, they planted “peas and carrots and pulses” and let their cows graze on the fields.

    While the Diggers saw their actions as relatively harmless (Champion compares it to having an allotment), local property owners viewed it as a serious threat, likening it to “village terrorism”, according to Champion.

    The local landowners called in troops to suppress these actions. Despite their relatively small numbers and short-lived experiments, which spread across parts of England, Champion suggests that the Diggers posed a significant ideological threat to the existing social order, challenging notions of private property and social hierarchy.

    Winstanley declared:

    “Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murther, or Theft”.

    He added:

    The Work we are going about is this, To dig up Georges-Hill and the waste Ground thereabouts, and to Sow Corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows. And the First Reason is this, That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation.

    The backlash from local landlords was systematic. The Diggers faced beatings and arson, forcing them to move from St George’s Hill to a second site in Cobham, until they were finally driven off the land entirely.

    Writing in 1972 in his book The World Turned Upside Down, Christopher Hill, a prominent historian of the English Civil War period, suggested that the Diggers’ influence was more widespread than just their most famous colony at St. George’s Hill. He argued that from Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire to Gloucestershire and Kent, Digger influence spread all over southern and central England.

    While the actual number of people involved in Digger experiments was relatively small (estimated at 100-200 people across England) and ended in 1651, their ideas spread more widely through pamphlets and word of mouth.

    This widespread influence, as described by Hill, suggests that the Diggers’ ideas resonated with people across a significant portion of England, even if actual Digger colonies were few in number.

    The Diggers were a radical, biblically inspired movement that practically implemented their beliefs about common ownership of land, provoking strong opposition from the established landowners despite their generally peaceful methods.

    The St. George’s Hill experiment represented a radical alternative to the prevailing economic and social order. It was an early example of what we might today call a food sovereignty project, emphasising local control over food production and distribution.

    In today’s era of industrial agriculture and corporate food systems, the Diggers’ ideas remain highly significant. Their resistance to the enclosure of common lands in the 17th century mirrors today’s struggles against corporate land grabs — and the colonising actions that underpin the likes of Bayer’s corporate jargon about the unlocking of ‘business growth’, ‘driving change management’, ‘driving market share’ and ‘creating business value’ — as well as the privatisation of seeds and genetic resources.

    The consolidation of the global agri-food chain in the hands of a few powerful corporations represents a modern form of enclosure, concentrating control over food production and distribution in ways that would have been all too familiar to Winstanley and his followers.

    The Diggers’ emphasis on local, community-controlled food production offers a stark alternative to the industrial agriculture model promoted by agribusiness giants and their allies in institutions like the World Bank and the WTO. Where the dominant paradigm prioritises large-scale monocultures, global supply chains and market-driven food security, the Diggers’ vision aligns more closely with concepts of food sovereignty and agroecology.

    Food sovereignty, a concept developed by the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, shares much with the Diggers’ philosophy. Both emphasise the right of communities to define their own food and agriculture systems.

    The Diggers’ legacy can be seen in various contemporary movements challenging the corporate food regime. From La Via Campesina’s global struggle for peasant rights to local community garden initiatives and the work of the Agrarian Trust in the US (which provides good insight into the Diggers and their continued relevance in The Diggers Today: Enclosure, Manure and Resistance), we see echoes of the Diggers’ vision.

    Modern projects to create community-owned farms, seed banks and food cooperatives can be seen as spiritual descendants of the Diggers’ movement, aiming to reclaim food production from corporate control and put it back in the hands of communities.

    However, realising the Diggers’ vision in the current context faces significant obstacles.

    The influence of agribusiness conglomerates over key institutions and policymaking bodies presents a formidable challenge. From the World Bank to national agriculture ministries, corporate interests often shape policies that prioritise industrial agriculture and global markets over local food systems. International trade agreements and memoranda of understanding, often negotiated with minimal public scrutiny, frequently benefit large agribusiness at the expense of small farmers and local food sovereignty.

    Moreover, proponents of industrial agriculture often argue that it is the only way to feed the world. This narrative, however, ignores the environmental and social costs of this model, as well as the proven productivity of small-scale, agroecological farming methods.

    The Diggers didn’t just theorise about an alternative society; they attempted to build it by taking direct action, occupying land and implementing their vision of communal agriculture.

    The Diggers also understood that changing the food system required challenging broader power structures. Today’s food sovereignty movements similarly recognise the need for systemic change, addressing issues of land rights, trade policies and economic justice alongside agricultural practices.

    In this era of corporate-dominated agriculture, the Diggers’ vision of a “common treasury for all” remains as radical and necessary as ever.

    By reclaiming the commons, promoting agroecological practices and building food sovereignty, ordinary people can work towards a world where food is truly a common treasury for all.

    The Diggers recognised that true freedom and equality could not be achieved without addressing the fundamental question of who controls the land and the means of production. This understanding is crucial in the current context, where corporate control over the food system extends from land, seeds and inputs to distribution and retail.

    This vision also challenges us to rethink our relationship with the land and with each other. In a world increasingly dominated by individualism and market relations, the emphasis on communal ownership and collective labour offers a radical alternative.

    The Diggers’ legacy challenges us to think beyond the confines of the prevailing food regime, to envision and create a world where food and land are not commodities to be bought and sold but common resources to be shared and stewarded for the benefit of all.

    Their vision of a world where “the earth becomes a common treasury again” is not a quaint historical curiosity, but a vital and necessary alternative to the destructive practices of those who dominate the current food system.

    The post In 1649… first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Survey warning on Papua ‘box ticking’ mega estates project goes unheeded

    By Stephen Wright for Radio Free Asia

    Indonesia’s plan to convert over 2 million ha of conservation and indigenous lands into agriculture will cause long-term damage to the environment, create conflict and add to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a feasibility study document for the Papua region mega-project.

    The 96-page presentation reviewed by Radio Free Asia was drawn up by Sucofindo, the Indonesian government’s inspection and land surveying company.

    Dated July 4, it analyses the risks and benefits of the sugar cane and rice estate in Merauke regency on Indonesia’s border with Papua New Guinea and outlines a feasibility study that was to have been completed by mid-August.

    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024
    COP29 BAKU, 11-22 November 2024

    Though replete with warnings that “comprehensive” environmental impact assessments should take place before any land is cleared, the feasibility process appears to have been a box-ticking exercise. Sucofindo did not respond to questions from RFA, a news service affiliated with BenarNews, about the document.

    Even before the study was completed, then-President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo participated in a ceremony in Merauke on July 23 that marked the first sugar cane planting on land cleared of forest for the food estate, the government said in a statement.

    Jokowi’s decade-long presidency ended last month.

    Excavators destroy villages
    In late July, dozens of excavators shipped by boat were unloaded in the Ilyawab district of Merauke where they destroyed villages and cleared forests and wetlands for rice fields, according to a report by civil society organisation Pusaka

    Hipolitus Wangge, an Indonesian politics researcher at Australian National University, told RFA the feasibility study document does not provide new information about the agricultural plans.

    But it makes it clear, he said, that in government there is “no specific response on how the state deals with indigenous concerns” and their consequences.

    The plan to convert as much as 2.3 million ha of forest, wetland and savannah into rice farms, sugarcane plantations and related infrastructure in the conflict-prone Papua region is part of the government’s ambitions to achieve food and energy self-sufficiency.

    Previous efforts in the nation of 270 million people have fallen short of expectations.

    Echoing government and military statements, Sucofindo said increasingly extreme climate change and the risk of international conflict are reasons why Indonesia should reduce reliance on food imports.

    Taken together, the sugarcane and rice projects represent at least a fifth of a 10,000 square km lowland area known as the TransFly that spans Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and which conservationists say is an already under-threat conservation treasure.

    Military leading role
    Indonesia’s military has a leading role in the 1.9 million ha rice plan while the government has courted investors for the sugar cane and related bioethanol projects.

    The likelihood of conflict with indigenous Papuans or of significant and long-term environmental damage applies in about 80 percent of the area targeted for development, according to Sucofindo’s analysis.

    The project’s “issues and challenges,” Sucofindo said, include “deforestation and biodiversity loss, destruction of flora and fauna habitats and loss of species”.

    It warns of long-term land degradation and erosion as well as water pollution and reduced water availability during the dry season caused by deforestation.

    Sucofindo said indigenous communities in Merauke rely on forests for livelihoods and land conversion will threaten their cultural survival. It repeatedly warns of the risk of conflict, which it says could stem from evictions and relocation.

    “Evictions have the potential to destabilize social and economic conditions,” Sucofindo said in its presentation.

    If the entire area planned for development is cleared, it would add about 392 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere in net terms, according to Sucofindo.

    That is about equal to half of the additional carbon emitted by Indonesia’s fire catastrophe in 2015 when hundreds of thousands of acres of peatlands drained for pulpwood and oil palm plantations burned for months.

    Then-President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo participates in a sugar-cane planting ceremony in Merauke
    Then-President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo participates in a sugar-cane planting ceremony in the Merauke regency of South Papua province in July. Image: Indonesian presidential office handout/Muchlis Jr

    Indonesia’s contribution to emissions that raise the average global temperature is significantly worsened by a combination of peatland fires and deforestation. Carbon stored in its globally important tropical forests is released when cut down for palm oil, pulpwood and other plantations.

    In a speech last week to the annual United Nations climate conference COP29, Indonesia’s climate envoy, a brother of recently inaugurated president Prabowo Subianto, said the new administration has a long-term goal to restore forests to 31.3 million acres severely degraded by fires in 2015 and earlier massive burnings in the 1980s and 1990s.

    Indonesia’s government has made the same promise in previous years including in its official progress report on its national contribution to achieving the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the rise in average global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius.

    “President Prabowo has approved in principle a program of massive reforestation to these 12.7 million hectares in a biodiverse manner,” envoy Hashim Djojohadikusumo said during the livestreamed speech from Baku, Azerbaijan.

    “We will soon embark on this programme.”

    Prabowo’s government has announced plans to encourage outsiders to migrate to Merauke and other parts of Indonesia’s easternmost region, state media reported this month.

    Critics said such large-scale movements of people would further marginalise indigenous Papuans in their own lands and exacerbate conflict that has simmered since Indonesia took control of the region in the late 1960s.

    Republished from BenarNews with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Biochar carbon removal as an industry superpower

    Industrialising the production of biochar could place Australia in a unique position to become a global leader in the permanent removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Biochar is a charcoal-like, stable form of carbon that is the result of burning organic material from agricultural and forestry wastes in a process called pyrolysis. Early adopters…

    The post Biochar carbon removal as an industry superpower appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Helene and Milton upended a key part of the nation’s food supply

    When Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida three weeks ago, Jason Madison was alone at his place, which doubled as a shrimp storefront in Keaton Beach. As the wind began to roar and the bay started to roil, Madison decided to flee. It was the right call. When he returned home the next morning, he found that the nearly 20-foot storm surge had torn it apart. Dead fish and broken furniture littered the landscape. Most everything in the building was lost, taking with it a cornerstone of his livelihood. 

    “I had five tanks under there where I stored shrimp, because we sell everything alive, but all that’s all gone now,” said Madison, a commercial bait and shrimp farmer for the last 23 years. He paused to take in the strewn debris. “Well, the pieces are around.” Anything Helene left behind is a waterlogged shell of what used to be. He doesn’t know how, or even if, he’ll rebuild.

    Stories like this are playing out all through the Southeast. The storm battered six states, causing billions of dollars in losses to crops, livestock, and aquaculture. Just 13 days later, Milton barreled across Florida, leaving millions without power and hampering ports, feed facilities, and fertilizer plants along the state’s west coast. 

    Preliminary estimates suggest Helene, one of the nation’s deadliest and costliest hurricanes since Katrina in 2005, upended hundreds of thousands of businesses throughout the Southeast and devastated a wide swath of the region’s agricultural operations. Milton’s impact was more limited, but the two calamities are expected to reduce feed and fertilizer supplies and increase production costs, which could drive up prices for things like chicken and fruit in the months and years to come.

    The compounding effect of the two storms will create “a direct impact on agricultural production,” said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. 

    When a farm, an orchard, a ranch, or any other agricultural operation is damaged in a disaster, it often leads to a drop in production, or even brings it to a screeching halt. That slowdown inevitably ripples through the companies that sell things like seeds and fertilizer and equipment. Even those growers and producers who manage to keep going — or weren’t directly impacted at all — might find that damage to roads and other critical infrastructure hampers the ability to bring their goods to market.

    Early reports indicate this is already happening. Downed trees, flooded roads, and congested highways have disrupted key transport routes throughout the Southeast, while ports across the region suspended operations because of the storms, compounding a slowdown that followed a dockworker strike along the Gulf and East Coast.

    Helene dismantled farming operations that serve as linchpins for the nation’s food supply chain. Cataclysmic winds destroyed hundreds of poultry houses across Georgia and North Carolina, which account for more than 25 percent of the machinery used to produce most of the country’s chicken meat. An analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that the region hit by Helene produced some $6.3 billion in poultry products in 2022, with over 80 percent of it coming from the most severely impacted parts of both states. In Florida, the storm flattened roughly one in seven broiler houses, which the Farm Bureau noted, compounding losses throughout the region that “will not only reduce the immediate supply of poultry but also hinder local production capacity for months or even years.”

    The storm uprooted groves, vegetable fields, and row crops throughout the region. Georgia produces more than a third of the nation’s pecans, and some growers have lost all of their trees. Farmers in Florida, one of the nation’s leading producers of oranges, bell peppers, sugar, and orchids, also have reported steep production losses, facing an uncertain future. The rain and floods unleashed by Helene hobbled livestock operations in every affected state, with the situation in western North Carolina so dire that local agricultural officials are crowdfunding feed and other supplies to help ranchers who lost their hay to rising water. Those working the sea were impacted as well; clam farmers along the Gulf Coast are grappling with the losses they incurred when Helene’s storm surge ravaged their stocks.

    Residents in Black Mountain, North Carolina prepare to tow donated hay across Helene’s floodwaters with a paddleboard to feed horses and goats on a nearby farm on October 3, 2024.
    Mario Tama via Getty Images

    All told, the counties affected by Helene produce about $14.8 billion in crops and livestock each year, with Georgia and Florida accounting for more than half of that. If even one-third of that output has been lost to the two hurricanes, the loss could reach nearly $5 billion, according to the Farm Bureau. 

    Preliminary estimates from the Department of Agriculture suggest the one-two punch may incur more than $7 billion in crop insurance payouts. On October 15, the USDA reported allocating $233 million in payments to producers so far. 

    As bad as it is, it could have been worse both for consumers and for farmers nationwide. Florida is home to the highest concentration of fertilizer manufacturing plants in the nation. Twenty-two of the state’s 25 phosphate waste piles, several owned by industry powerhouse Mosaic, were in Milton’s path. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, shuttered operations ahead of the storm, and has since announced it sustained  “limited damage” to its plants and warehouses. (But the Tampa Bay Times reported that one facility was grappling with water intrusion following Helene and was inundated during Milton, likely sending water polluted with phosphate waste flowing into Tampa Bay.) The storm also halted operations for several days at Port Tampa Bay, which handles around a quarter of the country’s fertilizer exports.  

    Production impacts from both hurricanes may be felt most acutely by the Sunshine State’s struggling citrus industry, which has long been embattled by diseases and destructive hurricanes. Any additional losses could further inflate costs for goods like orange juice, which reached record highs this year, according to Lee, the agricultural economist. “In the face of hurricane shocks, agricultural production in southern states like Florida will take it on the chin,” he said. 

    But teasing out the effect of a single storm on consumer prices is not only exceedingly difficult, it requires many years of research, Lee warned. Although all signs indicate that Hurricane Ian was partly responsible for the record food prices that followed that storm in 2022, the strain the hurricane placed on costs compounded other factors, including global conflict, droughts in breadbasket regions and the bird flu epidemic that decimated the poultry sector.  

    Even so, there’s still a chance that ongoing disruptions to ports and trucking routes could cause “the entire food supply chain to experience additional strain due to rising prices” associated with moving those goods, said Lee. If that turns out to be the case, “eventually, when you go to the supermarket, you will end up finding more expensive commodities, by and large.”

    One of the greatest unknowns remains the question of how many storm-weary operations will simply call it quits. Industrial-scale businesses will surely rebound, but the rapid succession of ruinous hurricanes may well discourage family farms and small producers from rebuilding, abandoning their livelihoods for less vulnerable ventures.

    “It’s what we call a compound disaster. You’re still dealing with the effects of one particular storm while another storm is hitting,” said economist Christa Court. She directs the University of Florida’s Economic Impact Analysis program, which specializes in rapid assessments of agricultural losses after disasters. “We did see after Hurricane Idalia that there were operations that just decided to get out of the business and do something else because they were impacted so severely.”

    A man surveys the damage from Hurricane Helene to his property
    Jason Madison, pictured, surveys the damage caused by Helene to his waterfront property in Keaton Beach, Florida on September 28, 2024.
    Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist

    Madison isn’t sure what’s next for his shrimp operation. He’s too focused on salvaging what he can to think that far ahead. “I don’t really know what I’m going to do,” he said. He hasn’t been able to afford flood insurance, so he’s not sure how much financial support he’ll end up getting to help him rebuild even as he’s still recovering from Hurricane Idalia, which pummeled Florida’s Big Bend area in August. “The last few years, it’s just things are dropping off, and times are getting hard … it’s like, what can you do?” 

    As the world continues to warm, more and more farmers may find themselves confronting the same question. 

    Jake Bittle contributed reporting to this story. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Helene and Milton upended a key part of the nation’s food supply on Oct 24, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bayer’s “Backward” Claim: A Bid to Reap Control of Indian Agriculture

    For some critics, if one firm tops a league table for anti-people, anti-nature business practices, it is Bayer (although there are many other worthy candidates). Nevertheless, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) signed a memorandum of understanding with Bayer in September 2023.  

    Bayer’s approach to agricultural development involves promoting a model of industrial agriculture dependent on corporate products, including its toxic chemicals and genetically modified crops, and advocating for precision, data-driven agriculture that relies heavily on its proprietary technologies and software. 

    Simon Wiebusch, Country Divisional Head of Crop Science for Bayer South Asia, recently stated that India cannot become a ‘developed nation’ with ‘backward’ agriculture. He believes India’s agriculture sector must modernise for the country to achieve developed nation status by 2047. 

    Bayer’s vision for agriculture in India includes prioritising and fast-tracking approvals for its new products, introducing genetically modified (GM) food crops, addressing labour shortages (for weeding) by increasingly focusing on herbicides and developing herbicides for specific crops like paddy, wheat, sugarcane and maize. 

    Government institutions like the ICAR seem likely to allow Bayer to leverage the agency’s infrastructure and networks to pursue its commercial plans. 

    Wiebusch’s comments have received much media coverage. There is a tendency for journalists and media outlets to accept statements made by people in top corporate jobs as pearls of wisdom never to be critically questioned, especially in India when there is talk of the country achieving ‘developed status’. But people like Wiebusch are hardly objective. They are not soothsayers who have an unbiased view of the world and its future.    

    Bayer has a view of what agriculture should look like and is gaining increasing control of farmers in various countries in terms of having a direct influence on how they farm and what inputs they use. Its digital platforms are intended to be one-stop shops for carbon credits, seeds, pesticides and fertilisers and agronomic advice, all supplied by the company, which gets the added benefit of control over the agronomic and financial data harvested from farms.  

    As for carbon credits, the non-profit GRAIN argues that, like digital platforms per se, carbon trading is about consolidating control within the food system and is certainly not about sequestering carbon.  

    So, what does Wiebusch mean when he talks about modernisation of a backward agriculture in India? All of what is set out above and more.  

    Like Wiebusch, corporate lobbyists often refer to ‘modern agriculture’. Instead, we should say: a system that produces healthy food for all while sustaining farming communities and livelihoods. Because the term ‘modern agriculture’ is deliberately deceptive: it means a system dependent on proprietary inputs and integrated with corporate supply chains. Anything other is defined as ‘backward’.  

    According to Bayer, Wiebusch is a star player who can drive market share and create business value for the company. On the Bayer India website it says: Simon’s key strengths include unlocking business growth, redefining distribution strategies, driving change management and building diverse teams that drive market share and create business value.  

    Stripped of the corporate jargon and any talk of ‘helping’ India, the goal is to secure control of the sector and ensure corporate dependency. 

    India has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton. 

    So, we might ask: who needs Bayer? 

    Bhaskar Save certainly did not on his impressively bountiful organic farm in Gujarat. In 2006, he described in an eight-page open letter (along with six annexures) to M S Swaminathan (widely regarded as the father of the Green Revolution in India) how the type of chemical-intensive agriculture that Bayer promotes and the urban-centric model of development favoured by the government has had devastating environmental economic and social consequences for India.  

    Save offered agroecological alternatives to address the problems, including solutions to boost farmer incomes and rural communities, cultivate a wider range of nutrient-dense crops, build soil fertility, improve water management, enhance on-farm ecology and increase biodiversity.  

    Vandana Shiva recently posted on X:  

    India’s agriculture was sustained over 10,000 years because it was based on nature’s laws of diversity, recycling, regeneration & circularity. Albert Howard spread organic farming worldwide learning from Indian peasants. Working with nature is sophistication, not backwardness. 

    Bayer calling India’s agriculture backward is a new toxic colonisation. Bayer/Monsanto, the poison cartel whose roots are in war, has driven biodiversity to extinction with monocultures, spread cancers with glyphosate & herbicides, destroyed democracy.

    Bayer promotes a corporate expansionist ‘development’ agenda that is self-sustaining and can be described as anything but development (see the online article Resisting Genetically Mutilated Food and the Eco-Modern Nightmare).  

    Companies like Bayer present their technologies and products as fixes for the problems created by the model of ‘growth’ and ‘development’ they promote. ‘Scientific innovation’ is touted as the answer. The proposed solutions often create new problems or worsen existing ones. This leads to a cycle of dependency on corporate products and technologies. Monsanto’s failed Bt cotton in India being a case in point. 

    Problems created by corporate-led development become opportunities for further corporate inputs and the commodification of knowledge and further ‘expert’ interventions. The primary motivation is financial gain rather than genuine societal improvement. 

    Corporate-driven ‘development’ is a misnomer, especially in agriculture, as it often leads to regression in terms of health, environmental sustainability and rural community resilience, while perpetuating a cycle of problems and ‘solutions’ that primarily benefit large corporations. 

    But the type of agroecological solutions presented by the likes of Bhaskar Save run counter to Bayer’s aims of more pesticides, more GMOs, more control and corporate consolidation. For example, the industry seeks to derail the EU’s farm to fork strategy (which involves a dramatic reduction in agrochemical use), and Bayer spends record amounts to shape policies to its advantage, courtesy of its entrenched lobbying networks. 

    Of course, Bayer presents its neocolonial aspirations in terms of helping backward Indian farmers. A good old dose of Western saviourism. 

    To promote its model, Bayer must appear to offer practical solutions. It uses the narrative of climate emergency to promote a Ponzi carbon trading scheme that is resulting in land displacement across the world. And Bayer says that labour shortages for manual weeding in Indian agriculture are a significant challenge, so the rollout of toxic herbicides like glyphosate are a necessity. 

    But there are several approaches to address this issue beyond relying on herbicides like glyphosate (it will kill all plants that do not have the herbicide tolerant trait), which is wholly unsuitable for a nation comprising so many small farms cultivating a diverse range of crops.  

    Mechanical weeding using animal-drawn or tractor-powered implements for larger farms is one solution, and there are several agronomic techniques that can help suppress weeds and reduce labour needs: crop rotation disrupts weed lifecycles, higher planting densities shade out weeds, proper fertilisation gives crops a competitive advantage and use of cover crops and mulches can suppress weed growth. 

    Even here, however, there are cynical attempts to get farmers to change their cultivation methods (with no tangible financial benefits) and move away from traditional systems.  

    In the article “The Ox Fall Down: Path Breaking and Treadmills in Indian Cotton Agriculture,” for instance, we see farmers being nudged away from traditional planting methods and pushed towards a method inconducive to oxen ploughing but very conducive for herbicide-dependent weed management. That article notes the huge growth potential for herbicides in India, something companies like Bayer are keen to capitalise on.   

    Wiebusch talks of India reaching ‘developed status’. But what does the type of ‘development’ he proposes entail?  

    We need only look around us for the answer: decision-making centralised in the hands of government and corporate entities, traditional local governance structures weakened and standardised, top-down policies and corporate consolidation through mergers and acquisitions with local independent enterprises struggling to compete. 

    Consolidated corporations have greater lobbying power to shape regulations in their favour, further entrenching their market position. In other words, political centralisation and corporate consolidation are often intertwined. Centralised political structures tend to align with the interests of large, consolidated corporations, and both centralised governments and large corporations exert greater control over resources.  

    This dual process has led to reduced economic diversity and resilience, weakened local communities and traditions, increased vulnerability to systemic shocks and diminished democratic participation.  

    ‘Developed status’ also means accelerated urbanisation, land amalgamations for industrial-scale farming and depopulation of the countryside.  

    It has been estimated that between 2016 and 2030, globally, urban areas will have tripled in size, expanding into cropland and undermining the productivity of agricultural systems. Around 60% of the world’s cropland lies on the outskirts of cities. This land is, on average, twice as productive as land elsewhere on the globe.   

    As cities expand, millions of small-scale farmers are displaced. These farmers produce the majority of food in the Global South and are key to global food security.  

    A combination of urbanisation and policies deliberately designed to displace the food-producing peasantry will serve to boost the corporate takeover of India’s agrifood sector.  

    But none of this is inevitable. Many of us know what the response should be: prioritising sustainable, locally appropriate solutions and restoring food sovereignty and the economic vibrancy of rural communities; focusing on holistic human well-being rather than narrow economic metrics of ‘growth’; preserving traditional knowledge that underpins highly productive  farming practices for the benefit of farmers, consumer health and the environment; and empowering communities through localism and decentralisation rather than creating state-corporate dependency. 

    Such solutions are markedly different from those characterised by rural population displacement, the subjugation of peoples and nature, nutrient-poor diets, degraded on-farm and off-farm ecosystems and corporate consolidation.  

    There are alternative visions for the future, alternative visions of human development. But these do not boost corporate margins or control and do not fit the hegemonic narrative of what passes for ‘development’. 

    The post Bayer’s “Backward” Claim: A Bid to Reap Control of Indian Agriculture first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • More schools than ever are serving vegan meals in California. Here’s how they did it.

    Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.” 

    The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom. One crowd pleaser happened to be totally vegan: a red lentil dal served with coconut rice. 

    “We have had students tell us that this is the best dish they’ve ever had in school food. To me, I was floored to hear this,” said Primer, who leads student nutrition for the San Luis Coastal district on California’s central coast, meaning she develops and ultimately decides on what goes on all school food menus. “It really builds respect into our food system. So not only are they more inclined to eat it, they’re also less inclined to waste it. They’re more inclined to eat all of it.”

    Primer’s summer program, which the district is now considering making a permanent part of the school calendar, was not intended to inspire students to embrace plant-based cooking. But that was one of the things that happened — and it’s happening in different forms across California. 

    Kids seated at a lunch table try three new school lunch menu options at a taste testing event.
    Students participate in an annual food-testing event for the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a menu that included vegan chickpea masala.
    Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    A recent report shows that the number of schools in California serving vegan meals has skyrocketed over the past five years. Although experts say this growth is partly a reflection of demand from students and parents, they also credit several California state programs that are helping school districts access more local produce and prepare fresh, plant-based meals on-site. 

    Growing meat for human consumption takes a tremendous toll on both the climate and the environment; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, cattle and other ruminants are a huge source of methane. Animal agriculture is also extremely resource-intensive, using up tremendous amounts of water and land. Reducing the global demand for meat and dairy, especially in high-income countries, is an effective way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rate of global warming. 

    The climate benefits of eating less meat are one reason that school districts across the country have introduced more vegetarian — and to a lesser degree, vegan — lunch options. In 2009, Baltimore City Public Schools removed meat from its school lunch menus on Mondays, part of the Meatless Mondays campaign. A decade later, New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, did the same. In recent years, vegan initiatives have built upon the success of Meatless Mondays, like Mayor Eric Adams’ “Plant-Powered Fridays” program in New York City. 

    But California, the state that first put vegetarianism on the map in the early 20th century, has been leading the country on plant-based school lunch. “California is always ahead of the curve, and we’ve been eating plant-based or plant-forward for many years — this is not a new concept in our state,” said Primer. A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth found that among California’s 25 largest school districts, more than half — 56 percent — of middle and high school menus now have daily vegan options, a significant jump compared to 36 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of elementary districts offering weekly vegan options increased from 16 percent to 60 percent over the last five years. 

    Interior shot of a greenhouse with tables holding plant sprouts
    A view of the greenhouse used for a Los Angeles magnet school’s after-school program focused on climate knowledge.
    Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

    Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”

    Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers — 79 percent — say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.

    Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the last five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.

    Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart. 

    In their climate-focused after-school program, students learn about farm-to-table cooking, composting, greenhouse sciences, and more.

    Making school lunches without animal products isn’t just a question of ingredients. It’s also a question of knowledge and resources — and the California legislature has created a number of programs in recent years that aim to get those tools to schools that need them. 

    In 2022, the state put $600 million toward its Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds program, which offers funding to schools to upgrade their kitchen equipment and train staff. This kind of leveling up allows kitchen staff to better incorporate “scratch cooking” — essentially, preparing meals on-site from fresh ingredients — into their operations. (The standard in school lunch sometimes is jokingly referred to as “cooking with a box cutter,” as in heating up and serving premade meals that come delivered in a box.) Another state program, the $100 million School Food Best Practices Funds, gives schools money to purchase more locally grown food. And the Farm to School incubator grant program has awarded about $86 million since 2021 to allow schools to develop programming focused on climate-smart or organic agriculture. 

    Although only the School Food Best Practices program explicitly incentivizes schools to choose plant-based foods, Stewart credits all of them with helping schools increase their vegan options. Primer said the Farm to School program — which provided the funding to develop her school district’s farming curriculum in its first two years — has driven new recipe development and testing. 

    All three state programs are set to run out of money by the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Nick Anicich is the program manager for Farm to School, which is run out of the state Office of Farm to Fork. (“That’s a real thing that exists in California,” he likes to say.) He says when state benefits expire, it’s up to schools to see how to further advance the things they’ve learned. “We’ll see how schools continue to innovate and implement these initiatives with their other resources,” said Anicich. Stewart says California has set “a powerful example” by bettering the quality and sustainability of its school lunch, “showing what’s possible nationwide.” 

    One takeaway Primer has had from the program is to reframe food that’s better for the planet as an expansive experience, one with more flavor and more depth, rather than a restrictive one — one without meat. Both ideas can be true, but one seems to get more students excited. 

    “That has been a really important focus for us. We want [to serve] food that is just so good, everybody wants to eat it,” Primer said. “Whether or not it has meat in it is almost secondary.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline More schools than ever are serving vegan meals in California. Here’s how they did it. on Oct 15, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hit Hard by Hurricane Helene, Georgia’s Migrant Farmworkers Struggle to Get Aid

    As Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida, residents are bracing for their second catastrophic storm in less than two weeks. Since September 26, when Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 4, communities across the Southeast have been grappling with the aftermath of that storm’s destruction. Among those hardest hit — and most overlooked — are farmworkers in southern…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The election could shape the future of America’s food system

    Nathan Ryder raises livestock and grows vegetables on 10 acres of pasture in Golconda, Illinois with his wife and three kids. They also live in a food desert; the local grocery store closed a few months ago, and the closest farmers market is at least 45 miles away, leaving their community struggling to access nutritious food. 

    Opening another supermarket isn’t the answer. The U.S. government has spent the last decade investing millions to establish them in similar areas, with mixed results. Ryder thinks it would be better to expand federal assistance programs to make them more available to those in need, allowing more people to use those benefits at local farms like his own. 

    Expanding the reach of the nation’s small growers and producers could be a way to address growing food insecurity, he said, a problem augmented by inflation and supply chains strained by climate change. “It’s a great opportunity, not only to help the bottom-line of local farmers, instead of some of these giant commodity food corporations … but to [help people] buy healthy, wholesome foods,” said Ryder.

    That is just one of the solutions that could be codified into the 2024 farm bill, but it isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. The deadline to finalize the omnibus bill arrives Monday, and with lawmakers deadlocked along partisan lines, it appears likely that they will simply extend the current law for at least another year. 

    Congress has been here before. Although the farm bill is supposed to be renewed every five years, legislators passed a one-year extension of the 2018 policy last November after struggling to agree on key nutrition and conservation facets of the $1.5 trillion-dollar spending package. 

    Extensions and delays have grave implications, because the farm bill governs many aspects of America’s food and agricultural systems. It covers everything from food assistance programs and crop subsidies to international food aid and even conservation measures. Some of them, like crop insurance, are permanently funded, meaning any hiccups in the reauthorization timeline do not impact them. But others, such as beginning farmer and rancher development grants and local food promotion programs, are entirely dependent upon the appropriations within the law. Without a new appropriation or an extension of the existing one, some would shut down until the bill is reauthorized. If Congress fails to act before Jan. 1, several  programs would even revert to 1940s-era policies with considerable impacts on consumer prices for commodities like milk.

    After nearly a century of bipartisanship, negotiations over recent farm bills have been punctuated by partisan stalemates. The main difference this time around is that a new piece is dominating the Hill’s political chessboard: The election. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen before the election, which puts a lot of teeth-gnashing and hair-wringing into hand,” said Ryder. He is worried that a new administration and a new Congress could result in a farm bill that further disadvantages small farmers and producers. “It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure novel right now. Which way is this farm bill going to go?”

    A combine harvests wheat in an expansive hillside field in rural Washington.
    The Farm Bill covers everything from crop subsidies to food assistance programs and even conservation measures. Typically a bipartisan effort, it has of late been bogged down by politics.
    Rick Dalton for Design Pics Editorial / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    The new president will bring their own agricultural policy agenda to the job, which could influence aspects of the bill. And, of course, whoever sits in the Oval Office can veto whatever emerges from Congress. (President Obama threatened to nix the bill House Republicans put forward in 2013 because it proposed up to $39 billion in cuts to food benefits.) Of even greater consequence is the potential for a dramatically different Congress. Of the 535 seats in the House and Senate, 468 are up for election. That will likely lead to renewed negotiations among a new slate of lawmakers, a process further complicated by the pending retirement of Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Although representatives are ramping up pressure on Congressional leadership to enact a new farm bill before this Congress reaches the end of its term, there is a high chance all of this will result in added delays, if not require an entirely new bill to be written.

    That has profound implications for consumers already struggling with rising prices and farmers facing the compounding pressures of consolidation, not to mention efforts to remake U.S. food systems to mitigate, and adapt to, a warming world, said Rebecca Wolf, a senior food policy analyst with Food & Water Watch. (The nonprofit advocates for policies that ensure access to safe food, clean water, and a livable climate.) “The farm bill has a really big impact on changing the kind of food and farm system that we’re building,” said Wolf. 

    Still, Monday’s looming deadline is somewhat arbitrary — lawmakers have until the end of the calendar year to pass a bill, because most key programs have already been extended through the appropriations cycle. But DeShawn Blanding, who analyzes food and environment policy for the science nonprofit the Union of Concerned Scientists, finds the likelihood of that happening low. He expects to see negotiations stretch into next year, and perhaps into 2026. “Congress is much more divided now,” he said. 

    The House Agriculture committee passed a draft bill in May, but the proposal has not reached the floor for a vote because of negotiating hang-ups. Meanwhile, the Senate Agriculture committee has yet to introduce a bill, although the chamber’s Democrats and Republicans have introduced frameworks that reflect their agendas. Given the forthcoming election and higher legislative priorities, like funding the government before December 20, the last legislative day on the congressional calendar, “it’s a likelihood that this could be one of the longest farm bills that we’ve had,” Blanding said.

    As is often the case, food assistance funding is among the biggest points of contention. SNAP and the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines how much a household receives through SNAP, have remained two of the biggest sticking points, with Democrats and Republicans largely divided over how the program is structured and funded. The Republican-controlled House Agriculture committee’s draft bill proposed the equivalent of nearly $30 billion in cuts to SNAP by limiting the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ability to adjust the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, used to set SNAP benefits. The provision, supported by Republicans, met staunch opposition from Democrats who have criticized the plan for limiting benefits during an escalating food insecurity crisis. 

    The farm bill “was supposed to be designed to help address food insecurity and the food system at large and should boost and expand programs like SNAP that help do that,” said Blanding, which becomes all the more vital as climate change continues to dwindle food access for many Americans. Without a new farm bill, “we’re stuck with what [food insecurity] looked like in 2018, which is not what it looks like today in 2024.” 

    Nutrition programs governed by the current law were designed to address pre-pandemic levels of hunger in a world that had not yet crossed key climate thresholds. As the crisis of planetary warming deepens, fueling crises that tend to deepen existing barriers to food access in areas affected, food programs authorized in the farm bill are “an extraordinarily important part of disaster response,” said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer at the nonprofit Feeding America. “The number of disasters that Feeding America food banks are asked to respond to each year is only increasing with extreme weather fueled by climate change.” 

    That strain is making it more critical than ever that Congress increase funding for programs like the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP. Its Farm to Food Bank Project Grants, established under the 2018 law, underwrites projects that enable the nation’s food banks to have a supply of fresh food produced by local farmers and growers. It must be written into the new bill or risk being phased out. 

    David Toledo, an urban farmer in Chicago, used to work with a local food pantry and community garden that supplies fresh produce to neighborhoods that need it. To Toledo, the farm bill is a gateway to solutions to the impacts of climate change on the accessibility of food in the U.S. He wants to see lawmakers put aside politics and pass a bill for the good of the people they serve.

    “With the farm bill, what is at stake is a healthy nation, healthy communities, engagements from farmers and rising farmers. And I mean, God forbid, but the potential of seeing a lot more hunger,” Toledo said. “It needs to pass. It needs to pass with bipartisan support. There’s so much at the table right now.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The election could shape the future of America’s food system on Sep 27, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Violence of Development

    A revised version (September 2024) of the open-access e-book Food Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order (2022) by Colin Todhunter is now available.

    A brand-new concluding chapter, “The Violence of Development”, rounds off a book that presents a scathing critique of the global industrial agriculture system and its proponents. The book takes aim at the Green Revolution and its modern equivalent (genetically modified organisms), the displacement of traditional farming practices, and the devastating impacts of a neoliberal agenda that is conveniently passed off as ‘development’.

    By critically examining the concept of ‘development’ and how it has been implemented globally, the new chapter argues that dependency and dispossession remain core elements of the global economic system. Those who are sacrificed on the altar of plunder in the countryside, in the forests or in the hills become regarded as the price worth paying for ‘progress’.

    The chapter frames conventional development as based on Western hegemony, imposing certain ideals on the rest of the world and cites post-development theorist Arturo Escobar’s critique of development as a top-down, ethnocentric approach.

    The violence of development takes the form of outright brutality and an ideological hegemony: a power play concerned with redefining who we are or what we should be, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

    As Escobar notes:

    Development was and continues to be—in theory and practice—a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of ‘progress’.

    By challenging the notion of a unilinear path to development, the chapter argues that historical outcomes were often shaped by chance and conflict rather than following a predetermined course. If history teaches us one thing, it is that humanity has ended up at its current point due to a multitude of struggles and conflicts, the outcomes of which were often in the balance. There is no unilinear path to development and no fixed standard as to what it constitutes.

    In other words, we have ended up where we are as much by chance as design. And much of that design was based on colonialism and imperialism. The development of Britain owes much to the  $45 trillion that was sucked from India alone, according to economist Utsa Patnaik.

    And that situation, in the name of ‘development’, is happening again, as noted by the prominent campaigner Aruna Rodrigues. In discussing the book, she said the following about the chapters on India:

    Colin Todhunter at his best: this is graphic, a detailed horror tale in the making for India, an exposé on what is planned, via the farm laws, to hand over Indian sovereignty and food security to big business. There will come a time pretty soon — (not something out there but imminent, unfolding even now), when we will pay the Cargills, Ambanis, Bill Gates, Walmarts — in the absence of national buffer food stocks (an agri policy change to cash crops, the end to small-scale farmers, pushed aside by contract farming and GM crops) — we will pay them to send us food and finance borrowing from international markets to do it.

    And this is called ‘development’.

    The new conclusion advocates for reestablishing humanity’s connections to the land, drawing inspiration from Gandhi’s philosophy and his concept of a ‘non-interventionist lifestyle’. It frames food justice and food sovereignty as part of a larger struggle against social, economic and environmental injustice and brutality disguised as ‘development’.

    Overall, this new concluding chapter provides a comprehensive critique of the global development paradigm, connecting it to the book’s themes of food, dependency and dispossession.

    The revised version of Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order can be read for free at Academia.edu (pdf), Heyzine (flipbook) and Global Research.

     

    The post The Violence of Development first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Omnivorous James C. Scott

    Like so many romantics, Scott mixed radical and conservative themes. No wonder he found appreciative readers across the political spectrum.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.