Post Tagged with: "Agriculture"

Living in Epoch-Defining Times: Food, Agriculture and the New World Order

Living in Epoch-Defining Times: Food, Agriculture and the New World Order

Farmerless farms manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented genetically engineered seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food. Data platforms, private equity firms, e-commerce giants and AI-controlled farming systems. This is the future that big agritech and agribusiness envisage: a future of ‘data-driven’ and ‘climate-friendly’[Read More…]

by — 06/01/2022 — Comments are Disabled — World
Cultivating Resistance: Food, Dependency and Dispossession

Cultivating Resistance: Food, Dependency and Dispossession

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

by — 04/11/2021 — Comments are Disabled — World
Challenge Capitalist Use of Agriculture as a Weapon of Domination

Challenge Capitalist Use of Agriculture as a Weapon of Domination

It is time to take action against corporate methods of agriculture which poison the food our families eat, threaten the survival of soil ecosystems, destroy the livelihood of farmers, crush farmworker organizing efforts and subjugate entire countries. Here are a few of the many ways that people are challenging capitalist agriculture, from the very theoretical to the very concrete. The[Read More…]

by — 22/10/2021 — Comments are Disabled — World
Tomatoes and Apples–Big Agribusiness Promoted Despite Increasing Reports of Its Adverse Impact

Tomatoes and Apples–Big Agribusiness Promoted Despite Increasing Reports of Its Adverse Impact

As the farmers’ movement has set the alarm bells ringing regarding the need to check growing corporate control of agriculture, farmers and activists are now more conscious regarding drawing attention to adverse impacts of the clearly emerging trend of increasing corporatization of agriculture. Despite this, the trend of government policy appears to be clearly in favor of increasing corporate control.[Read More…]

by — 20/07/2021 — Comments are Disabled — India
 Microsoft vs Indian Farmers: Agri-Stacking the System

 Microsoft vs Indian Farmers: Agri-Stacking the System

In April, the Indian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft, allowing its local partner CropData to leverage a master database of farmers. The MoU seems to be part of the AgriStack policy initiative, which involves the roll out of ‘disruptive’ technologies and digital databases in the agricultural sector. Based on press reports and government statements, Microsoft would[Read More…]

by — 20/05/2021 — Comments are Disabled — India
Gates Unhinged: Dystopian Vision for Agrifood Must Not Succeed

Gates Unhinged: Dystopian Vision for Agrifood Must Not Succeed

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agrifood chain. The high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose a certain type of agriculture and food production on the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is[Read More…]

by — 18/04/2021 — Comments are Disabled — World
Four Words Gates and His Pals Despise: Democracy & Minimum Support Price

Four Words Gates and His Pals Despise: Democracy & Minimum Support Price

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an assortment of high-profile figures and policy makers are pushing for unregulated gene-editing technologies, the rollout of bio-synthetic food created in laboratories, the expanded use of patented seeds and the roll back of subsidies and support for farmers in places like India. These neoliberal evangelists despise democracy and believe that state machinery and[Read More…]

by — 06/04/2021 — Comments are Disabled — World
From Rich Diversity to Narrow Genetic Base in Agriculture

From Rich Diversity to Narrow Genetic Base in Agriculture

One of the most creative endeavors of farmers all over the world but even more so in tropical countries has been to protect , promote and nurture a diversity of crop varieties. They continued to do so for thousands of years and for well over a hundred generation. As a result of this , over a period of around five[Read More…]

by — 19/02/2021 — Comments are Disabled — India
Why Protection of Traditional Wisdom in Agriculture is Extremely Important

Why Protection of Traditional Wisdom in Agriculture is Extremely Important

It is well recognized that not all traditions are goods. Some widespread aspects of many traditional societies like discrimination and inequality  at various levels ( such as caste, gender and class) need to be rejected completely. However there are several other aspects relating to the wisdom accumulating over centuries regarding farming and allied activities, forestry, water conservation, crafts and related[Read More…]

by — 19/02/2021 — Comments are Disabled — India
Myth That Progress Necessarily Involves Shift of People From Village To City Should Be Challenged

Myth That Progress Necessarily Involves Shift of People From Village To City Should Be Challenged

One of the most persistent beliefs in development discourse has been that progress inevitably involves shift from rural to urban areas. This is largely rooted in the historical industrial path of progress. But there are a number of important reasons led by environmental ones why the past models of development which have brought us to the brink of a survival[Read More…]

by — 05/01/2021 — Comments are Disabled — India
From Mass Agriculture to Corporatisation of Agriculture

From Mass Agriculture to Corporatisation of Agriculture

Modi and His Washington Masters in Dismantling of Agricultural Economy and Food Security in India The surge of wealth of Indian billionaires and the Modi led BJP government’s onslaught on poor, marginalised and farmers continue to grow simultaneously as masses face annihilating pandemic of Coronavirus. There is 90 % rise of Indian billionaire’s wealth over last one decade. It is[Read More…]

by — 22/12/2020 — Comments are Disabled — India
How Growing Corporatization Has Harmed Farmers and Farming

How Growing Corporatization Has Harmed Farmers and Farming

The most prominent feature of world farming in recent decades has been that of growing corporate control, and this has often been at the expense and interests of farmers. It is important to understand the wide-ranging adverse implications of this  corporatization of farming for the sustainability of farming systems, for the welfare of ordinary farmers and for food-security of the[Read More…]

by — 09/12/2020 — Comments are Disabled — India
Photo by George M. Groutas

To Resolve the Farming Crisis We Need A Different Paradigm

Whenever we hear about serious problems relating to farmers and farming and how to resolve them, we hear this generally in the context of three versions. One version is of existing and upcoming big business interests who want to have an increasing role and ultimately domination in the farming sector. The second version is of the government which while supporting[Read More…]

by — 09/12/2020 — Comments are Disabled — Environmental Protection
India’s Farm Policy Should Get Rid of its Green Revolution Myths

India’s Farm Policy Should Get Rid of its Green Revolution Myths

            One of the biggest and most persistent myths of the discourse on agriculture relates to the success of the so-called green revolution. Let’s look at the actual experience of the green revolution (G.R.) in India. In agriculture the period after mid-sixties is generally regarded as the ‘green revolution’ phase of Indian agriculture. The most important feature of this technology[Read More…]

by — 08/12/2020 — Comments are Disabled — India
Agribusiness and food industry: A curse for slavery and traditional farming

Agribusiness and food industry: A curse for slavery and traditional farming

Ignorance can be the best escapism, but if we are cognizant about the history of agriculture and the morphology of earth, we will know that a spectre haunts the living today. The spectre of science in proliferating scientificity and genealogy of knowledge on food production haunt us today. Food for self is transformed into food for others under the realm[Read More…]

by — 31/08/2020 — Comments are Disabled — Environmental Protection
The Pandemic Must Transform Our Agriculture

The Pandemic Must Transform Our Agriculture

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the risks of an unhealthy diet and the extreme fragility of food systems. The economic reconstruction that will follow the pandemic is the perfect opportunity to provide better nutrition and health to all. The pandemic should spur us to redefine how we feed ourselves, and agricultural research can play a vital role in making our[Read More…]

by — 08/07/2020 — Comments are Disabled — India
Contract farming, not helpful to real farmers of Odisha

Contract farming, not helpful to real farmers of Odisha

The recent three major legislations by central Govt. on agriculture produce marketing is going to impact the small producers in agriculture sector of India. Already there has been change in other sectors such as mining, industry and business to invite more FDI and facilitate the free play of private companies. The Essential commodities Act 1956 amendment removed Cereals, pulses, oil[Read More…]

by — 12/06/2020 — Comments are Disabled — India
From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Toxic Agriculture Is the Problem Not the Solution

From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Toxic Agriculture Is the Problem Not the Solution

Why did the European Food Safety Authority claim that glyphosate was not ecotoxic? This is the question environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason poses in her new 23-page report which can be accessed in full here. In places, the report reads like a compilation of peer-reviewed studies and official reports that have documented the adverse impacts of chemicals used in modern agriculture.[Read More…]

by — 04/07/2019 — Comments are Disabled — India
 A call for Comprehensive Agrarian Reforms

 A call for Comprehensive Agrarian Reforms

India need to respond urgently to the agrarian question and engage with the communities, people and movements working for Comprehensive Land Reforms. It is long over due and in the absence of it, we can not build peace and strengthen democracy. India, unlike others, is a caste ridden feudal society. After the independence we promised to our people that we[Read More…]

by — 05/10/2018 — Comments are Disabled — India
Indian Peasants Cry For Justice

Indian Peasants Cry For Justice

  India is now the world’s fastest-growing major economy, but years of drought and a failure to create jobs for a burgeoning young population has left millions of rural Indians struggling. India’s   120 million farmers are considered e the backbone of the country’s food security but disillusionment runs through almost entire rural India. Farming remains the country’s dark spot and[Read More…]

by — 01/06/2017 — 1 comment — India
Seeds Of Farmer’s Distress     

Seeds Of Farmer’s Distress     

Despite being the country with the second largest agricultural land in the world, hardly two fifth or forty percent of the agricultural land is irrigated. Also, even though the country boasts of being the highest producer of many major agro commodities in the world, it suffers from low productivity. The naked and cruel truth is  that agriculture remains its Achilles’[Read More…]

by — 10/11/2016 — 2 comments — India
 A System Of Food Production For Human Need, Not Corporate Greed

 A System Of Food Production For Human Need, Not Corporate Greed

There has been an adverse trend in the food and agriculture sector in recent times with the control of seeds and chemical inputs being consolidated through various proposed mergers. If these mergers go through, it would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector. Over the past couple of decades, there has already been a restriction of choice with[Read More…]

by — 26/09/2016 — 1 comment — Environmental Protection