PROFIT, POWER AND
GEOPOLITICS
Genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) are not essential for feeding the world [1,2], but if they were to lead
to increased productivity, did not harm the environment and did not negatively
impact biodiversity and human health, would we be wise to embrace them anyhow?
The fact is that GMO technology
would still be owned and controlled by certain very powerful interests. In
their hands, this technology is first and foremost an instrument of corporate
power, a tool to ensure profit. Beyond that, it is intended to serve US global
geopolitical interests. Indeed, agriculture has for a long time been central to
US foreign policy.
“AMERICAN foreign policy has almost always been based on agricultural
exports, not on industrial exports as people might think. It’s by agriculture
and control of the food supply that AMERICAN diplomacy has been able to control
most of the Third World. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has
been to turn countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash
crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food
crops.” Professor Michael Hudson [3].
Background Information:
CORN-SEED SALES IN BRAZIL, ARGENTINA AND MEXICO HELP MONSANTO WITH
RECORD EARNINGS
CORN-SEED SALES IN BRAZIL, ARGENTINA AND MEXICO HELP MONSANTO WITH
RECORD EARNINGS
SHARE OF THE COMMODITY CAKE
MILITARY STYLE TRADE WARS, GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION
The Project for a New AMERICAN
Century and the WOLFOWITZ Doctrine show that US foreign policy is about power,
control and ensuring global supremacy at any cost [4,5]. Part of the plan for
attaining world domination rests on the US controlling agriculture and
hijacking food sovereignty and nations’ food security.
In his book ‘Seeds of
Destruction’, William Engdahl traces how the oil-rich ROCKEFELLER family
translated its massive wealth into political clout and set out to capture
agriculture in the US and then globally via the ‘green revolution’ [6].
Along with its big-dam, water-intensive infrastructure requirements,
this form of agriculture made farmers dependent on corporate-controlled
petroproducts and entrapped them and nations into dollar dependency and debt.
GMOs represent more of the same due to the patenting and the increasing
monopolization of seeds by a handful of mainly US companies, such as MONSANTO,
DUPONT and BAYER.
Background Information:
THE GREAT WATER GRAB
INVESTING IN WATER: THE MOST PROFITABLE INVESTMENT OF THE 21ST CENTURY
GLOBAL AGRARIAN CRISIS
In INDIA, MONSANTO has sucked
millions from agriculture in recent years via royalties, and farmers have been
compelled to spend beyond their means to purchase seeds and chemical inputs
[7]. A combination of debt, economic liberalization and a shift to (GMO) cash
crops (cotton) has caused hundreds of thousands of farmers to experience
economic distress, while corporations have extracted huge profits [8]. Over
270,000 farmers in India have committed suicide since the mid to late nineties
[9].
Background Information:
MONSANTO’S INCREASING REIGN OVER THE WORLD’S AGRICULTURE WILL SURPASS
ANYTHING IMAGINABLE
In SOUTH AMERICA, there are
similar stories of farmers and indigenous peoples being forced from their lands
and experiencing violent repression as GMOs and industrial-scale farming take
hold [10]. It is similar in AFRICA, where MONSANTO and THE GATES Foundation are
seeking to further transform small-scale farming into a corporate controlled
model. They call it ‘investing’ in agriculture as if this were an act of
benevolence.
SMALL FARM PRODUCES MOST OF THE WORLD’S FOOD
Agriculture is the bedrock of
many societies, yet it is being recast for the benefit of rich agritech, retail
and food processing concerns. Small farms are under immense pressure and food security
is being undermined, not least because the small farm produces most of the
world’s food [11]. Whether through land grabs and takeovers, the production of
(non-food) cash crops for export, greater chemical inputs or seed patenting and
the eradication of seed sharing among farmers, profits are guaranteed for
agritech corporations and institutional land investors.
The recasting of agriculture in
the image of big agribusiness continues across the globe despite researchers
saying that this chemical-intensive, high-energy consuming model means BRITAIN
only has 100 harvests left because of soil degradation [12]. In PUNJAB, the
‘green revolution’ model of industrial scale, corporate dominated agriculture
has led to a crisis in terms of severe water shortages, increasing human
cancers and falling productivity [13]. There is a global agrarian crisis. The
increasingly dominant corporate-driven model is unsustainable.
More ecological forms of
agriculture are being called for that, through intelligent crop management and
decreased use of chemical inputs, would be able to not only feed the world but
also work sustainably with the natural environment. Numerous official reports
and scientific studies have suggested that such policies would be more
appropriate, especially for poorer countries [14-16].
When on occasion the chemical-industrial model indicates that it does
deliver better yields than more traditional methods (a generalization and often
overstated [17]), even this is a misrepresentation. Better yields but only with
massive chemical inputs from corporations and huge damage to health and the
environment as well as ever more resource-driven conflicts to grab the oil that
fuels this model. Like the erroneous belief that economic ‘growth’ (GDP) is
stimulated just because there becomes greater levels of cash flows in an
economy (and corporate profits are boosted), the notion of improved
agricultural ‘productivity’ also stems from a set of narrowly defined criteria.
The dominant notions that
underpin economic ‘growth’, modern agriculture and ‘development’ are based on a
series of assumption that betray a mindset steeped in arrogance and contempt:
the planet should be cast in an urban-centic, ethnocentric model whereby the
rural is to be looked down on, nature must be dominated, farmers are a problem
to be removed from the land and traditional ways are backward and in need of
remedy.
DEVELOPING NATIONS ACCOUNT FOR MORE THAN 80% OF WORLD POPULATION, BUT
CONSUME ONLY ABOUT A THIRD OF THE WORLD’S ENERGY
“People are perceived as ‘poor’
if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk
foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in
self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo
and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if
they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than
synthetics.” Vandana Shiva [18]
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WESTERN corporations are to
implement the remedy by determining policies at the WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION,
IMF and WORLD BANK (with help from compliant politicians and officials) in
order to depopulate rural areas and
drive folk to live in cities to then strive for a totally unsustainable,
undeliverable, environment-destroying, conflict-driving, consumerist version of
the AMERICAN Dream [19,20].
It is interesting (and
disturbing) to note that ‘developing’ nations account for more than 80% of
world population, but consume only about a third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5% of the world’s
population, but consume 24% of the world’s energy. On average, one AMERICAN
consumes as much energy as two JAPANESE, six MEXICANS, 13 CHINESE, 31 INDIANS,
128 BANGLADESHIS, 307 TANZANIANS and 370 ETHIOPIANS [21].
Despite the environmental and
social devastation caused, the outcome is regarded as successful just because
business interests that benefit from this point to a growth in GDP. Chopping
down an entire forest that people had made a living sustainably from for
centuries and selling the timber, selling more poisons to spray on soil or
selling pharmaceuticals to address the health impacts of the petrochemical food
production model would indeed increase GDP, wouldn’t it? It’s all good for
business. And what is good for business is good for everyone else, or so the
lie goes.
"CORPORATOCRACY"
“Corporations as the dominant
institution shaped by capitalist patriarchy thrive on eco-apartheid. They
thrive on the Cartesian legacy of dualism which puts nature against humans. It
defines nature as female and passively subjugated. Corporatocentrism is thus
also androcentric – a patriarchal construction. The false universalism of man
as conqueror and owner of the Earth has led to the technological hubris of
geo-engineering, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. It has led to the
ethical outrage of owning life forms through patents, water through
privatization, the air through carbon trading. It is leading to appropriation
of the biodiversity that serves the poor.” [22]
The ‘green revolution’ and now
GMOs are ultimately not concerned with feeding the world, securing well-rounded
nutritious diets or ensuring health and environmental safety. (In fact, INDIA now
imports foods that it used to grow but no longer does [23]; in AFRICA too,
local diets are becoming less diverse and less healthy [24].) Such notions are
based on propaganda or stem from well-meaning sentiments that have been pressed
into the service of corporate interests.
MONSANTO IS A DRIVING FORCE BEHIND WHAT COULD EVENTUALLY LEAD TO THE
RESTRUCTURING AND SUBJUGATION OF INDIA BY THE US
Biotechnological innovations have
always had a role to play in improving agriculture, but the post-1945 model of
agriculture has been driven by powerful corporations like MONSANTO, which are
firmly linked to PENTAGON and WALL STREET interests [25]. Motivated by
self-interest but wrapped up in trendy PR about ‘feeding the world’ or imposing
austerity to ensure prosperity, the publicly stated intentions of the US
state-corporate cabal should never be taken at face value [26,27].
In INDIA, MONSANTO and WALMART
had a major role in drawing up the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture [28]. MONSANTO
now funds research in public institutions and its presence and influence
compromises what should in fact be independent decision and policy making
bodies [29,30]. MONSANTO is a driving force behind what could eventually lead
to the restructuring and subjugation of INDIA by the US [31].
The IMF and MONSANTO are also working to ensure UKRAINE’S subservience
to US geopolitical aims via the capture of land and agriculture [32]. The
capture of agriculture (and societies) by rich interests is a global
phenomenon.
Only the completely naive would
believe that rich institutional investors in land and big agribusiness and its
backers in the US State Department have humanity’s interests at heart. At the
very least, their collective aim is profit. Beyond that and to facilitate it,
the need to secure US global hegemony is paramount.
The science surrounding GMOs is
becoming increasingly politicized and bogged down in detailed arguments about
whose methodologies, results, conclusions and science show what and why. The
bigger picture however is often in danger of being overlooked. GMO is not just
about ‘science’. As an issue, GMO and the chemical-industrial model is linked
to ultimately a geopolitical objective, driven by power and profit.
By Colin Todhunter via Global Research
Notes
1] This report indicates the root causes for global food
shortages:
http://www.cban.ca/Resources/Topics/Feeding-the-World/Will-GM-Crops-Feed-the-World
2] Citing official reports and data sources, references in
this article indicate agricultural productivity in India was better in 1760 and
1890 and that India does not require chemical-industrial agriculture let alone
GMOs:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/india-genetically-modified-seeds-agricultural-productivity-and-political-fraud/5328227
6] Arun Shrivastava reviews and summarizes Engdahl’s book
here:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/seeds-of-destruction-the-hidden-agenda-of-genetic-manipulation-2/9379
8] Based on the
findings of a report by researchers at Cambridge University in the UK:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-evidence-of-suicide-epidemic-among-indias-marginalised-farmers
9] Official figure quoted by the BBC as of 2013:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21077458
11] Official report released by GRAIN:
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4929-hungry-for-land-small-farmers-feed-the-world-with-less-than-a-quarter-of-all-farmland
12] Farmers Weekly quotes a report by researchers at the
University of Sheffield in the UK: http://www.fwi.co.uk/news/only-100-harvests-left-in-uk-farm-soils-scientists-warn.htm
13] Newspaper report quoting official statistics and
research findings: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/337124/punjab-india039s-grain-bowl-now.html
14] Official UN report: http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/tdr2013_en.pdf
15] http://www.srfood.org/en/official-reports# andhttp://www.plantpartners.org/agroecology-reports.html
19] Food policy analyst Devinder Sharma outlines the motives
of Western corporations in India:
http://www.bhoomimagazine.org/article/cash-food-will-strike-very-foundation-economy
20] Arundhati Roy discusses the erroneous notion of
‘progress’ being applied in India and the conflict and violence that has
followed: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/we-call-this-progress/
21] http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm
22]
http://www.spaziofilosofico.it/numero-07/2959/economy-revisited-will-green-be-the-colour-of-money-or-life/
23] Vandana Shiva describes how the ‘green revolution’ and
‘free trade’ have turned India into a net importer of foods it used to be self
sufficient in: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/09/201398122228705617.html
24] Article describing the plight of agriculture in Africa:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/behind-the-mask-of-altruism-imperialism-monsanto-and-the-gates-foundation-in-africa/5408242
25]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsantos-gmo-food-and-its-dark-connections-to-the-military-industrial-complex/5389708
26] Article providing factual historical insight into
Monsanto and its wrongdoings:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-complete-history-of-monsanto-the-worlds-most-evil-corporation/5387964
27] Analysis of Wall Street’s fraudulent practices in recent
times and the complicity of the entire political and economic system:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/03/pers-m15.html
28]http://www.democracynow.org/2006/12/13/vandana_shiva_on_farmer_suicides_the
29]
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/07/monsanto-a-contemporary-east-india-company-and-corporate-knowledge-in-india/
30] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/nip-this-in-the-bud/article5012989.ece
31] http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter031114.htm
32] http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/food-security-hostage-wall-street-and-us-global-hegemony
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