Tag Archives: Agriculture

Multinational Agrichemical Corporations and the Great Food Transformation, by Birsen Filip

Posted on December 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Woke” agricultural is going to be even less satisfying—in fact it will be downright deadly—than woke entertainment, woke media, woke academia, etc. From Birsen Filip at mises.org:

In July 2022, the Canadian government announced its intention to reduce “emissions from the application of fertilizers by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.” In the previous month, the government of the Netherlands publicly stated that it would implement measures designed to lower “nitrogen pollution some areas by up to 70 percent by 2030,” in order to meet the stipulations of the European “Green Deal,” which aims to “make the EU’s climate, energy, transport and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.”

In response, Dutch “farm and agriculture organizations said the targets were not realistic and called for a protest,” which led farmers and their supporters to rise up across the country. The artificially designed Green Deal is one of the goals of Agenda 2030, which was adopted by 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) in 2015.

In addition to the UN, Agenda 2030 is also supported by a number of other international organizations and institutions, including the European Union, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Bretton Woods Institutions, which consist of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is also endorsed by some of the most powerful agrichemical multinational corporations in the world, such as BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Syngenta, which, together, control more than 75 percent of the global market for farm inputs. In recent years, “the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina, and the merger of Bayer and Monsanto” have “reshaped the global seed industry.” Additionally, “DuPont de Nemours was formed by the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont in 2017.” However, “within 18 months of the merger the company was split into three publicly traded companies with focuses on the following: agriculture with Corteva, materials science with Dow and specialty products with DuPont.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Environment, Government

Tagged

Fowl Play, by Hardscrabble Farmer

Posted on November 28, 2022 | 1 comment

How real food is raised. From Hardscrabble Farmer at theburningplatform.com:

Understand this; were it not for the US Government and the USDA, this situation would not be possible. They created the industrial food system, they deliberately targeted small family farms for destruction and every single outcome since that time was designed to happen by the experts.

1.8 million chickens on a single farm. In what kind of mad scientist fever dream could any scenario like this occur? That is not a farm, it is a factory. It would be like describing the crowd at the Super Bowl as a loving and committed relationship, only a thousand times more absurd.

Farming is a traditional means of managing land, livestock, perennial vegetation, annual crops and a single multi-generational family with the skills and experience necessary to preserve the health and well-being of everything in that system as nature intended. What the government subsidizes and exploits today no more resembles that than a gas pump at a service station does your own child. Nature is not a series of machine; it is an organic system that operates with or without us. It wasn’t created by man and it will endure without him. The arrogance of attempting to thwart it by turning it into some Frankenstein monster results only in catastrophic failure.

On out farm animals do not succumb to illness or disease because we look after their continuing health and fitness on a daily basis. We provide them with access to the things that Nature and God have supplied in abundance and protect them from predation and distress. These CAFO/industrial food systems created by the USDA and big business look at livestock and produce the same way an accountant looks at numbers in a ledger. They have no other purpose aside from control and profit. The manures are not seen as a means of fertility, but as waste. The flavor and texture of the end product is immaterial and they are the single most common source of food borne illness in the US. They require frequent medication, intense amounts of energy and vast distribution chains. They rely on the mitigation of bacteria rather than the maintenance of a healthy environment where such opportunistic pathogens are kept in check.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Business, Environment

Tagged ,

Why The West Lusts After Ukraine, by Larry Johnson

Posted on June 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Notwithstanding that Ukraine has one of the poorest economies in Europe, it’s loaded with natural resources and is an agricultural powerhouse. From Larry Johnson at sonar21.com:

Until Joe Biden took office I thought that George W Bush had dibs on the “stupidest foreign policy blunder in history” award. His decision to invade Iraq rather than eliminate Al Qaeda hurt the United States and fueled international terrorism. But leave it to Joe Biden to one-up W by imposing sanctions on Russia that are inflicting an economic holocaust on the United States and Europe. Heck of a job, Joe.

The ostensible reason for “punishing” Russia with sanctions that actually pummel the west was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Now we all know that Ukraine was/is the poorest nation in Europe. Right?

Ukraine is one of the worst off countries after the collapse of the USSR. It is the poorest country in Europe despite having a huge aerospace industry, natural resources and some of the most fertile land for agriculture. During the communist era, Ukraine was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Despite all this, Ukrainians have experienced terrible famines such as the Stalinist Holodomor.

Today, the situation is not much better. Apart from enduring a war with Russia, its political system is particularly corrupt. Almost the entire economy is in the hands of big oligarchs: millionaires who amass fortunes thanks to their connections with political power.

Let me share with you some critical facts about Ukraine and its economic potential. When you consider these facts you will likely wonder why Ukraine is not one of the richest nations in Europe.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , ,

California Lawmakers Want To Buy Up Water Rights And Cut Farming To Stave Off Drought, by Tyler Durden

Posted on June 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

Is California trying to cut people off from food, water, and gasoline? That trifecta would be a big feather in the cap of Newsome and his cohorts in the California legislature. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

In places like California, water is a hot commodity these days.  With a drought in play everyone is looking for someone else to blame, various cities are ordering cuts to daily use for families and individuals, and the primary target for now is California farmers and their legally protected water rights.  It is these same rights that legislators now want to “buy” in order to shut down or greatly decrease agricultural production.

California, like most of the world, has a long history of intermittent droughts.  Such droughts are simply a fact of life and there is nothing abnormal or extreme about today’s conditions when taking past weather events into account.  If you ask the mainstream media, though, they will tell you this is the “worst drought in 1200 years” and climate change is the cause.

This is, of course, simply not true.  The California droughts in 1976-1977 and 1987-1992 were just as bad if not worse overall than the conditions of today.  That’s not to say that the current situation is stable, far from it, but the Chicken Little panic on display in the media is driven far more by agenda than by reality.  It has become a standard tactic these days to connect every single inconvenient weather scenario to “global warming” despite the fact that there is no evidence to support the claim.  There has been an endless array of droughts in CA long before man-made carbon existed.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Collapse, Economy, Government

Tagged , ,

Globalists Are Taking Over the Food System — It’s Part of Their Plan to Control You, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on June 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

Controlling what you can and cannot eat is a pretty effective way of controlling people, which has always been the ultimate goal of the Davos demons. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at childrenshealthdefense.org:

The globalists’ takeover of the food system is underway — if they control the seeds they control the food, and if they control the food they can use the digital ID to control consumer access to the food.

Story at a glance:

  • The globalist takeover is coming at us from every possible angle. Whether we’re talking about biosecurity, finance, housing, healthcare, energy, transportation or food, all the changes we’re now seeing have one goal, and that is to force compliance with the globalists’ agenda.
  • The global food system, and protein sources, in particular, are currently under coordinated and intentional attacks to manufacture food shortages and famine.
  • The globalist elite intend to eliminate traditional farming and livestock and replace it with indoor-grown produce and lab-created protein alternatives that they own and control.
  • While the presence of hundreds of food brands gives the appearance of market competition, the reality is that the food industry is monopolized by fewer than a dozen companies, and all of them, in turn, are largely owned by BlackRock and Vanguard.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economy, Governments, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , ,

“We Are On The Precipice”, by James Rickards

Posted on May 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

Food shortages are going to get much worse as we head into a global crisis. From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

I don’t believe many people grasp the enormity of the global food crisis we’ll be facing in the months ahead. But the world could be on the verge of a massive humanitarian crisis. Let’s dive in…

The supply chain collapse preceded the war in Ukraine, but the war has only intensified the problems. You can see it with your own eyes when you walk into a supermarket and find long stretches of empty shelves in stores that used to be chock-full of food and other merchandise.

Even goods that are available such as gasoline are being sold at much higher prices. Prices for gasoline (and diesel, which is critical for goods transportation) have more than doubled in the past nine months. All of this is clear. The question is will it get worse from here?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

Bob Unanue is the CEO of Goya Foods, which is one of the largest food distributors in the world. Few people are better positioned to assess the global food situation than Unanue, who deals with raw food deliveries on the one hand and retail customers on the other.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments

Tagged , ,

A Farming Insider Has Warned Me That The Coming Food Shortages Are Going To Be FAR WORSE Than We Are Being Told, by Michael Snyder

Posted on January 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

Can you think of anything that’s happened since Biden was inaugurated that has turned out to be not as bad as feared? No. Probably a good idea to take the above warning seriously. From Micheal Snyder at themostimportantnews.com:

The information that I am about to share with you is extremely alarming, but I have always endeavored to never sugarcoat things for my readers.  Right now, there are shortages of certain items in grocery stores across the United States, and food supplies have gotten very tight all over the globe.  I have repeatedly warned that this is just the beginning, but I didn’t realize how dire things have already gotten until I received an email from a farming insider that I have corresponded with over the years.  I asked him if I could publicly share some of the information that he was sharing with me, and he said that would be okay as long as I kept his name out of it.

According to this farming insider, dramatically increased costs for fertilizer will make it impossible for many farmers to profitably plant corn this year.  The following is an excerpt from an email that he recently sent me…

“Things for 2022 are interesting (and scary). Input costs for things like fertilizer, liquid nitrogen and seeds are like triple and quadruple the old prices. It will not be profitable to plant this year. Let me repeat, the economics will NOT work. Our plan, is to drop about 700 acres of corn off and convert to soybeans (they use less fertilizer, and we also have chicken manure from that operation). Guess what? We are not the only ones with those plans. Already there is a shortage of soybean seeds, so we will see how that will work out. The way I see it, there will be a major grain shortage later in the year, especially with corn. I mean, we are small with that. What about these people in the midwest who have like 10,000 acres of corn? This will not be good.”

Once I received that message, I wrote him back with some questions that I had.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Collapse, Economy, Government

Tagged , ,

The U.S. Government Vows to “Fix” the Food System, by Bill Bonner

Posted on September 27, 2021 | 3 comments

Like they’ve fixed the educational and medical systems, and turned everything else they’ve touched into crap. From Bill Bonner at rogueeconomics.com:

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Things go wrong.

The Wall Street Journal published this alert last night:

Democratic leaders are trying to shepherd two complicated legislative packages: a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sprawling healthcare, education and climate package whose proposed $3.5 trillion price tag and contents are still under intense debate within the party.

At the same time, the government’s funding is set to expire at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 1, which would partially shut down the government if Congress doesn’t act. Lawmakers also are feuding over who is responsible for raising the debt limit and avoiding a potentially catastrophic default. Absent swift action, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress this month that the Treasury may be unable to keep paying all of the government’s bills on time during October.

Reuters calls it a “moment of truth” for Congress.

Politicians grandstand. They argue and point the finger at each other.

But if the spending is interrupted, it won’t be interrupted for long. The real truth is that Democrats and Republicans agree on the important issue – that the rip-off of the American public must go on.

Borrow… spend… print… and borrow more.

Eventually, the end of the world as we have known it comes. And then, things get serious. Painful. Chaotic. And disastrous.

Empty Stomachs

And today, we look at one of the most nightmarish features of the End of the World As We Have Known It: hunger.

It is hard to imagine widespread hunger in the U.S. The country is so rich, so big, so productive… food is so plentiful… and its people are so fat. What could possibly go so wrong as to cause people to go hungry?

Continue reading→

3 Comments

Posted in Business, Collapse, Government, Politics, Propaganda

Tagged , ,

China Won’t Be Taking Over the World, by Joseph Solis-Mullen

Posted on August 12, 2021 | 2 comments

The Chinese are smart people, no doubt, but rule by statist bureaucracy carries the seeds of its own destruction, no matter how smart the people are who are running it. This article is a welcome counterweight to the many alternative media articles that have recently hailed China as the dominant power for the next few centuries. From Joseph Solis-Mullen at mises.org:

While the US has its problems, future global Chinese supremacy won’t be one. Far from being in a position of overwhelming strength, China and its Communist leadership face imminent multifront domestic crises that will threaten the existence not only of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but the existence of the Chinese state as a unified whole. Further, there are several insurmountable obstacles to it seriously disturbing core US interests or expanding its influence much beyond its own coasts before this happens.

First, China’s geography is terrible if projecting power is a state aim. Endless flatlands running into Mongolia and Siberia to the north, deserts and mountains to the west, more mountains and dense jungle to the south, while its eastern coast is ringed by states terrified of an expansionist China. Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, along with other affected regional actors such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and India will work hard to keep China boxed in. One of the most trade-dependent countries of the existing order, China faces hazardous supply chain access in the event of any conflict in the South or East China Seas.

China’s internal geography breeds its own problems. For one thing, it is seriously strapped for foodstuffs. A shocking statistic: on a per capita basis it has less arable agricultural land than Saudi Arabia. What farmland China does have requires enormous amounts of petrochemical fertilizers and laborers to keep even moderately productive. Further, lacking interconnected east-west-flowing waterways, moving mass amounts of produce around internally is expensive and inefficient over the vast distances that locally produced foodstuffs must travel to the highly populated eastern seaboard provinces. The world’s largest food importer by far, it is heavily reliant on the continued stability of global supply chains and access to markets.

Continue reading→

2 Comments

Posted in Banking, Business, Debt, demographics, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Geopolitics, Governments, Military, Trade

Tagged , , ,

‘Truth About Industrial Agriculture’ — Myth-Busting Report Exposes Big Ag’s Large-Scale Deception, by Kenny Stancil

Posted on August 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

Maybe factory-farming isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. From Kenny Stancy at childrenshealthdefense.org:

If actors in the corporate food regime were required to internalize the true costs of production, according to a report by Family Farm Action Alliance,”their businesses would no longer be economically viable and they would not be competitive with independent farmers and ranchers.”

In an effort to inform policymakers, advocates and the public about the impacts of agrifood corporations on the U.S. food system and build support for transforming the nation’s agricultural practices, the Family Farm Action Alliance released a new report on Wednesday that details how Big Ag‘s survival depends on externalizing costs and perpetuating myths about the supposed lack of more just and sustainable alternatives.

“Time and time again family farmers, rural communities and good food movement advocates have pushed to shift government support away from industrial agriculture and toward a more resilient and equitable system,” Joe Maxwell, president of Family Farm Action Alliance, said in a statement. “Time and time again, we have failed — because Big Ag controls the narrative. Our report offers a playbook to counter Big Ag’s deception and finally break their stranglehold on our food system.”

Titled “The Truth About Industrial Agriculture: A Fragile System Propped Up by Myths and Hidden Costs,” the report documents how corporations involved in the “economically flawed” agribusiness model “intentionally evade costs all along their supply chains.”

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Economics, Economy, Government, Law, Politics

Tagged