According to Colin Todhunter in “The Perils of Concentrated Agriculture, US Agribusiness, GMOs and the Plundering of the Planet” rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations are destroying global farms and farmers.
Monster Monsanto lobbies ever-onward for monopolistic tyranny globally particularly enabled by our US pimped out politicians misusing our military and intelligence services as well as our tax dollars and colluding with corrupt governments willing to starve their own populations for profit and power.
It is the small farms and farmers who take care of their own food needs as well as local and national markets.
Agritech corporations now are absorbing with the help of criminally colluding governments the best land. Then they, according to Todhunter, “prioritize commodities” and export crops for profit to international markets that target the “urban affluent” — the hell with general humanity, once again. Profits uber alles.
Subsequently, these agribusinesses bring “food insecurity, poverty and hunger” in their wake.
These agribusinesses,Todhunter asserts, propagandize that they are addressing global hunger while doing the opposite. Once again, media-touted “globalization” is not for the benefit of global humanity but for its impoverishment. It is for the profiteering of the one percent.
That “free trade” Trojan horse scam just keeps galloping on!
Todhunter explains that “hedge funds, private equity and pension funds” are capitalizing on global farmland in record numbers. Small farmers are being victimized in courts to garner their lands.
In Ukraine, according to Todhunter, 16% of agricultural land is operated by farmers but has provided a whopping 55% of the agricultural output. Impressive results. 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk in Ukraine. The agribusinesses desire that 16% of the land and are on their way to taking it.
Raping Ukraine’s land and its food supply for profit.
The US-backed illegitimate coup in Ukraine, the new Nazi/corporate puppet government, soon will be “handing over agriculture to US agribusiness.”
In the name of “austerity reform” small farmers will lose their farms. The EU-backed loan to Ukraine will result in deregulation of agriculture for the benefit of the profiteering foreign corporations. Crop harvests will go for export and profits. This will have devastating results for Ukrainians. .
Who cares? Profits uber alles. Ukrainians are already dying for this agenda at the hands of the violent and illegitimate Kiev puppet government. Let them die by hunger, as well. The US government certainly doesn’t care. Apparently not the EU, either. The Nazis and criminal corporate syndicate of the Ukraine surely don’t.
US humanitarian interventionism in Ukraine? Bullshit.
The EU Association Agreement with Ukraine, explains Todhunter, contains a clause that requires “cooperation” of the new puppet government and the EU to promote extensive use of biotechnology, including GMOs.
Enter that monster, Monsanto, along with others.
Funny how the mainstream media rarely addresses that Ukraine is, according to Todhunter, the “world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat.” In recent years foreign corporations have acquired significant amounts of Ukrainian land already. Now they are about to take over the rest of it.
Todhunter:
According to Oriental Review, “within two to three years, as the relevant provisions of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU go into effect, Monsanto’s lobbying efforts will transform the Ukrainian market into an oligopoly consisting of American corporations.”
It amounts to little more than the start of the US colonisation of Ukraine’s seed and agriculture sector. This corporate power grab will be assisted by local banks.
Apparently, these banks will only offer favourable credit terms to those farmers who agree to use certified herbicides: those that are manufactured by Monsanto.
Interestingly, the investment fund Siguler Guff & Co has recently acquired a 50% stake in the Ukrainian Port of Illichivsk, which specialises in agricultural exports.
We need look no further than to Ukraine’s immediate neighbour Poland to see the devastating impact on farmers that Western agribusiness concerns are having there. Land grabs by foreign capital and the threat to traditional (often organic) agriculture have sparked mass protests as big agribusiness seeks to monopolise the food supply from field to plate. The writing is on the wall for Ukraine.
The situation is not unique to Poland, though; the impact of policies that favour big agribusiness and foreign capital are causing hardship, impacting health and destroying traditional agriculture across the world, from India and Argentina to Brazil and Mexico and beyond.
Todhunter quotes a farmer from Vermont named Hillary Martin who sums up the situation:
“We are here at the [US-Canadian] border to demonstrate the global solidarity of farmers in the face of globalization. The corporate takeover of agriculture has impoverished farmers, starved communities and force-fed us genetically-engineered crops, only to line the pockets of a handful of multinational corporations like Monsanto at the expense of farmers who are struggling for land and livelihood around the world.”
Todhunter also regards this rape of Ukraine land as an important part of a geopolitical agenda of the US to divide Ukraine from Russia. To “subjugate” Ukraine. Because of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and EU, the US is subjugating the EU regional economy by introducing — inflicting — GMOs in the name of “free trade.”
One more country destroyed on the bloody, hegemonic US clipboard.
[cross-posted on correntewire]
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