1margd
Not just the Facebooks and Amazon:
The future of our food system and agribarons, laid bare by COVID-19:
Ezra Klein@ezraklein Jul 8, 2020
Farmers and animal rights activists are coming together to fight big factory farms
Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren have a new bill, and a new coalition, with far-reaching consequences.
...Booker realized there was a place that vegans and farmers could come together: Both of them hate the ways agribusiness had consolidated and mechanized the meat market, forcing farmers into using massive, cruel, and environmentally devastating confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
The agricultural industry has an unusual structure: Virtually every node in the industry is highly concentrated around a few megaproducers...
But the food is still grown, and the animals still raised, on family farms. These farms are, in theory, independent, but in practice, they bear the risks of independence without the expected freedoms. The megaproducers they buy from and sell to have all the leverage; farmers are left with little choice save to accept the onerous, binding contracts they’re offered. As the Center for American Progress puts it, “growing corporate power has left relatively small farms and ranches vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of the oligopolies with which they do business.”
...In 2018, median farm income was negative $1,840 — meaning most farms lost money...
As farmers have lost control of their livelihoods, they’ve also lost control of their animals, their crops, and their land. They have no choice but to contract with companies that dictate the way they raise their animals, setting farmers in competition with one another for production speeds and efficiency. The way you win that competition is to pack more animals into your sheds, pump them fuller of antibiotics so they don’t die from infections that flourish amid overcrowding, raise breeds that live lives of pain but grow with astonishing speed, create massive manure lagoons that poison streams and turn air acrid. The result is a brutal incentive to mechanize the process of livestock production in ways cruel to the animals, the farmers, and their communities.
...“For years and years, giant multinational corporations have been crushing competition in the agricultural sector and seizing key markets while regulators have looked the other way,” Warren says. “The Covid-19 crisis is making it even easier for Big Ag to get even bigger and gobble up small farms — leaving farmers out in the cold and consumers facing higher costs and fewer choices.”
...The average American consumed 222 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2018, according to the USDA. Right now, big agribusiness producers try to ease consumer consciences through misdirection: Their packaging and advertising emphasize small farms, their ag-gag laws and contract provisions choke off the flow of actual information, the massive scale and mechanization of their processes hold down prices, and their political contributions repel real oversight.
...The Farm System Reform Act won’t end all the abuses of factory farming, all the environmental degradation it causes, all the economic exploitation faced by farmers. But it’s a start. And if the odd-bedfellows coalition Booker is trying to build materializes, and finds real political footing, profound change is possible...
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311327/farmers-factory-farms-cafos...
The future of our food system and agribarons, laid bare by COVID-19:
Ezra Klein@ezraklein Jul 8, 2020
Farmers and animal rights activists are coming together to fight big factory farms
Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren have a new bill, and a new coalition, with far-reaching consequences.
...Booker realized there was a place that vegans and farmers could come together: Both of them hate the ways agribusiness had consolidated and mechanized the meat market, forcing farmers into using massive, cruel, and environmentally devastating confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
The agricultural industry has an unusual structure: Virtually every node in the industry is highly concentrated around a few megaproducers...
But the food is still grown, and the animals still raised, on family farms. These farms are, in theory, independent, but in practice, they bear the risks of independence without the expected freedoms. The megaproducers they buy from and sell to have all the leverage; farmers are left with little choice save to accept the onerous, binding contracts they’re offered. As the Center for American Progress puts it, “growing corporate power has left relatively small farms and ranches vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of the oligopolies with which they do business.”
...In 2018, median farm income was negative $1,840 — meaning most farms lost money...
As farmers have lost control of their livelihoods, they’ve also lost control of their animals, their crops, and their land. They have no choice but to contract with companies that dictate the way they raise their animals, setting farmers in competition with one another for production speeds and efficiency. The way you win that competition is to pack more animals into your sheds, pump them fuller of antibiotics so they don’t die from infections that flourish amid overcrowding, raise breeds that live lives of pain but grow with astonishing speed, create massive manure lagoons that poison streams and turn air acrid. The result is a brutal incentive to mechanize the process of livestock production in ways cruel to the animals, the farmers, and their communities.
...“For years and years, giant multinational corporations have been crushing competition in the agricultural sector and seizing key markets while regulators have looked the other way,” Warren says. “The Covid-19 crisis is making it even easier for Big Ag to get even bigger and gobble up small farms — leaving farmers out in the cold and consumers facing higher costs and fewer choices.”
...The average American consumed 222 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2018, according to the USDA. Right now, big agribusiness producers try to ease consumer consciences through misdirection: Their packaging and advertising emphasize small farms, their ag-gag laws and contract provisions choke off the flow of actual information, the massive scale and mechanization of their processes hold down prices, and their political contributions repel real oversight.
...The Farm System Reform Act won’t end all the abuses of factory farming, all the environmental degradation it causes, all the economic exploitation faced by farmers. But it’s a start. And if the odd-bedfellows coalition Booker is trying to build materializes, and finds real political footing, profound change is possible...
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311327/farmers-factory-farms-cafos...
2John5918
New Report Warns of an Unprecedented Wave of Land Privatization (Oakland Institute)
Amidst a worsening climate crisis, the Oakland Institute’s new report, Driving Dispossession: The Global Push to “Unlock the Economic Potential of Land”, sounds the alarm on the unprecedented wave of privatization of natural resources that is underway around the world. Through six case studies—Ukraine, Zambia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, and Brazil—the report details the myriad ways by which governments—willingly or under the pressure of financial institutions and Western donor agencies—are putting more land into so-called “productive use” in the name of development.
“The fact that most of the land on our planet, especially in the Global South, is public land or land held under customary tenure systems is seen as an obstacle to exploitation and economic growth,” said Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute and the lead author of the report. “Governments are being pushed to adopt the Western notion of private land ownership to give corporations access to natural resources—land, water, and minerals—just the opposite of the drastic shift we need to win the struggle against climate change,” he continued.
Driving Dispossession highlights the United States as a key player in an unfettered offensive to privatize land around the world via US blockchain corporations, government agencies, and the World Bank...
Amidst a worsening climate crisis, the Oakland Institute’s new report, Driving Dispossession: The Global Push to “Unlock the Economic Potential of Land”, sounds the alarm on the unprecedented wave of privatization of natural resources that is underway around the world. Through six case studies—Ukraine, Zambia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, and Brazil—the report details the myriad ways by which governments—willingly or under the pressure of financial institutions and Western donor agencies—are putting more land into so-called “productive use” in the name of development.
“The fact that most of the land on our planet, especially in the Global South, is public land or land held under customary tenure systems is seen as an obstacle to exploitation and economic growth,” said Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute and the lead author of the report. “Governments are being pushed to adopt the Western notion of private land ownership to give corporations access to natural resources—land, water, and minerals—just the opposite of the drastic shift we need to win the struggle against climate change,” he continued.
Driving Dispossession highlights the United States as a key player in an unfettered offensive to privatize land around the world via US blockchain corporations, government agencies, and the World Bank...
