Note: In 2005, I posted this article on Counterpunch.org.
The article took on a life of its own all over the world, including
some bodies at the United Nations in research initiatives. This is
likely because of the article's reference to war, food, profit and
exploitation that prevails in the midst of violent confrontations and
when the stage is set for corporate agribusiness to arrogantly intrude
in war torn and militarized zones. In that we have recently experienced
some exceptionally dangerous and violent hurricanes of late, and, as
mentioned, that corporate entities generally use this as an opportunity
to destroy and take over locally controlled enterprises, I thought I
would share again this perspective on the devastating impact of
corporate agribusiness anywhere in the world. Author Naomi Klein appropriately refers to these corporate takeovers after disasters as, in the title of her book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".
Much
of the agriculture in Puerto Rico and in the Virgin Islands has been
destroyed because of the recent hurricanes. All of us need to assist the
small farmers in each of the countries and do what we can to prevent
corporate agribusiness from invading and taking advantage of this
disaster. Believe me - America's corporate agribusiness is drooling over
this opportunity!!!
I wrote this article in consultation with the late Al Krebs who was a mentor of mine and the author of "The Corporate Reapers: the Book of Agribusiness".
Home Grown Axis of Evil
Corporate Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq
and the Dred Scott Decision
by HEATHER GRAY
Counterpunch.org
Justice Initiative International
October 8, 2017
In
2005, I attended the National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis,
Missouri. While there I visited the historic St. Louis courthouse and
the huge Gateway Arch by the Mississippi River that symbolizes St. Louis
as the gateway to the west. It was here that US corporate agribusiness,
the US occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott decision intersected in
reality as well as symbolically.
The St. Louis courthouse is famous for the deliberations of Dred Scott in the mid-1800's
and displays in the courthouse feature the historic documents of this
renowned court case. Scott was a slave and sued for his freedom, which
was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld
the decision in 1857. The court ruled that Scott was not a citizen and
therefore could not bring a case to a federal court. In the same case,
the court also ruled that the Missouri Compromise that forbade slavery
in new territories was unconstitutional as it denied the rights of slave
property owners. The decision had sweeping consequences, not the least
of which being yet another catalyst for the initiation of the Civil War.
Interestingly, two months after Supreme Court decision, Scott's present
owner freed him anyway.
Standing
under the Gateway Arch, and looking west, one sees the old St. Louis
courthouse, and to the east, the Mississippi River. As I looked across
the river there was, to my amazement, a warehouse-like building with a
huge rather crass sign reading "Cargill". It was obviously a decadent
marketing ploy by the agribusiness giant, the Cargill Corporation, that
is the largest grain trader in the world. The Cargill sign was,
therefore, in a direct path, underneath the arch, to the courthouse. I
mentioned this disturbing image across the river to one of the park
stewards. She said, "Yes, there are times I would like to bomb East St.
Louis." I thought that was a rather interesting comment.
As
is now well known, oil is but one of the major interests the US has in
Iraq. Because wars are invariably a pretext for economic expansion and
opportunities for corporate greed, I knew that US corporate agribusiness
was not about to be left out of the picture. My concerns were realized
when, in April of 2003, Bush's Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman
appointed Daniel Amstutz, formerly an executive of the Cargill
Corporation, to oversee the "rehabilitation" of agriculture in Iraq.
With Cargill having the reputation of being one the worst violators of
the rights and independence of family farmers throughout the world, I
knew Iraqi farmers were doomed.
Cargill
is massive. This corporate agribusiness grain trader has 800 locations
in 60 countries and more than 15 lines of business. It is the largest
private company in the US and the 11th largest public or private company
in terms of sales.
Cargill
is renowned for receiving huge subsidies from the US government to then
dump vast amounts of grains in poorer countries where Cargill is
trading. This process, in effect, undermines small farmers, helps to
destroy the local food production systems and forces dependence of small
farmers and local rural economies on corporate agribusiness.
Amstutz,
however, brought additional corporate and international trade
qualifications to the table. He was undersecretary for international
affairs and commodity programs from 1983 to 1987 for the Reagan
administration; ambassador and chief negotiator for agriculture during
the Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks
1987-1989; and past president of the North American Grain Export
Association. None of these qualifications were encouraging for the well
being of the small family farmers in Iraq.
Oxfam's policy director Kevin Watkins said:
"Putting
Dan Amstutz in charge of agriculture reconstruction in Iraq is like
putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission. This
guy is uniquely well placed to advance the commercial interests of
American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market, but singularly
ill equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a developing country."
I
also knew that, as the US was poised to invade Iraq, US corporate
agribusiness companies engaged in producing and promoting genetically
modified organisms (GMO's) throughout the world would be salivating.
Why
would corporate agribusiness be salivating??? Some history here. It is
thought that agriculture started 13,000 years ago in the Fertile
Crescent - in the area now called Iraq -
where
the Tigress and the Euphrates rivers intersect. The Iraqi ancestral
farmers and this fertile land brought us major crops such as wheat,
barley, dates and pulses (see Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies").
The area is hugely important in world history. Given they are
considered the initiators, for thousands of years the contributions of
the Iraqi farmers to the world's agriculture production system have been
unquestionably profound.
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It
is also likely that women were the initiators of agriculture. Women
were the gatherers in hunting and gathering pre-agricultural societies.
As women were the ones gathering nuts and roots for their communities,
they would have been the observers of seeds and their growth patterns.
This is likely why the majority of the African farmers today are women
and throughout our human history the world's farmers have largely been
women.
Now
comes the corporate connection. Food is something everyone needs. There
is no question about this and no need for a survey - the market is a
given. Huge profits are in the offing.
Controlling
all aspects of food - its production, packaging, distribution and
commodity markets - is the dream world of corporate agribusiness.
The
major impediment to corporate agribusiness controlling all aspects of
food and then reaping all of the profits, however, is competition from
the independent family farmer in the US and throughout the world.
Throughout
our history, the family farmer's controlling interest has been
protected by two of the most important components of agriculture - the
two "s'" - soil and seeds.
Soil
is not monolithic. It is amazingly and thankfully diverse. It's
components and minerals differ everywhere and farmers historically have
always adjusted to this through crop rotations that will add or remove
certain nutrients to the soil, and/or farmers will let the soil rest and
lay fallow for a specified time. Traditional farmers will also use
natural nutrients like compost and manure to replenish the soil. In this
way, the soil remains "alive" with organic nutrients, earthworms and
the like. Seeds and plants are also selected for the type of soil and
farmers themselves have performed, and still perform, this selection
since the beginning of agriculture.
Seeds
are also not monolithic, of course, even within the same plant family.
They are amazingly diverse and the diversity of seeds is our lifeblood.
Like humans, plants are vulnerable to disease. The more diverse our
plants, the safer we humans are. The more diverse our plants, the less
vulnerable they will be to an all-encompassing disease that could and
has wiped out some crops within days or less. Without diversity there is
virtually no resistance to disease. The great Irish potato famine in
1845, for example, resulted from a uniform potato production that had no
resistance to the potato blight.
How
have farmers maintained this diversity and therefore protected our food
supply? As mentioned, they have always adjusted seeds to the type of
soil in their area by selecting and saving the seeds of successful
plants. This is a very "local" process. By doing so, for thousands of
years, farmers have thankfully maintained the diversity of our food
chain. As Martin Teitel and Kimberly Wilson note in their excellent book
"Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature" (1999):
"Appreciation
of the importance of biodiversity dates back a hundred centuries to the
beginning of the agriculture process.Farmers remained powerless,
however, when it came to the interaction between crops and their
environments. No one could predict whether a season would be wet or dry.
Consequently, farmers quickly learned the importance of diversity:
maintenance of various crops that thrived under a variety of conditions
to avoid entire crop failures and starvation."
Also,
farmers have always historically saved seeds for next year's crop. Most
farmers in the world don't go to the store and supply warehouse to buy
seeds. The seeds are their on their farm and their grandparents,
great-grandparents and great-great grandparents likely grew versions of
the same seed stock.
The
mission of farmers historically and around the world has always been to
grow food for family and community sustenance, and not competition
against each other - a mission that is much to the ire of western
capitalists. Invariably, farmers will also share their seeds with their
neighboring farmers. This collective and cooperative spirit of the
farming community is legendary.
Vandana
Shiva refers to the importance of local agriculture production in a
sustainable environment and the threat of removing it from local control
in her book "Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development " (1989) where she writes:
"The
existence of the feminine principle is linked with diversity and
sharing. Its destruction through homogenization and privatization leads
to the destruction of diversity and the commons. The sustenance economy
is based on a creative and organic nature, on local knowledge, on
locally recycled inputs that maintain the integrity of nature, on local
consumption for local needs, and on marketing of surplus beyond the
imperatives of equity and ecology.."
It
is well known and documented that small farmers everywhere are the best
stewards and sustainers of the land. They are closer to it - they know
what it takes to feed it and care for it. I've seen farmers lift soil in
their hands and know exactly what is needed in the soil. In this sense,
small family farmers are also the most efficient farmers in terms of
crop yields, as virtually every foot on that farm is known to them. To
be sure, millions of farm families - women, men and children -
throughout the world from the Philippines to the US are sophisticated
homegrown agronomists who work the fields.
I
can easily be accused of romanticizing the farming profession, but I've
seen farmers with a glow in their eye when talking about being involved
in one of the most sacred of all professions the practice of
nurturing and witnessing the flowering of crops from small seeds and,
consequently, sustaining all of us through the production of food.
The world's family farmers now and historically are our unsung heroes!
So
what has corporate agribusiness done to disrupt the powerful soil-seed
mantra and erode the independence of family farmers? Chemicals were
employed that neutralize and invariably have polluted and poisoned our
soil, which destroys its diversity. Seed patents have been intensified,
coupled with the development of genetically modified organisms (GMO's).
Corporations have attempted to make farmers dependent on all of these
interventions.
After
WWII there were vast amounts of nitrogen left over from making bombs.
Dow, Shell and Dupont decided they could sell the nitrogen to farmers
for profit and thus began the now infamous "green revolution" leading to
huge amounts of chemical poisons in agriculture. The complicity of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture in the green revolution is also a major
factor. The result has been a devastating farmer dependency on chemical
poisons along with the destruction of our soil and leading to us humans
ingesting more chemicals (read Al Krebs' excellent "The Corporate Reapers: the Book of Agribusiness"
- 1992). The chemical and poison additives in soil make it easier for
seed business' to disregard the diversity of our fertile soil which then
paves the way for less diverse and genetically altered seed stocks.
Farmers
who have used these poisons, and are now attempting to veer away from
this dependency, describe their soil as "dead". It can become alive
again, but it takes a few years.
GMO's
are seeds composed of DNA from an altogether different species.
Historically, when we have bred our plants we have done so with the same
plant family. The long-term health consequences of the GMO produced
crops that we now ingest are unknown at this point, yet we do know that
this science leads to an irreversible erosion of genetics and encourages
monoculture. As Teitel and Wilson explain:
"The
genetic engineering of our food is the most radical transformation in
our diet since the invention of agriculture (thousands of years ago).
Genetic engineering has allowed scientists to splice fish genes into
tomatoes, to put virus genes in squash, bacterium genes in corn, and
human genes in tobacco (to"grow" pharmaceuticals). Normally the
boundaries between species are set by nature. Until recently, those
biological barriers have never been crossed. Genetic engineering allows
these limits to be exceeded with results that no one can predict."
Companies
will then patent the GMO seeds and encourage farmers to grow them. Once
seeds are purchased farmers are required to sign contracts specifying
they what cannot do with these seeds, such as save them or share them.
To further complicate matters, companies, citing legal priorities due to
patent rights, will prosecute farmers who save seeds rather than
purchase the seeds from the seed company the next year. The major GMO
crops grown since GMO soy was first commercialized in 1996 are corn,
soy, cotton and canola. According to the Center for Food Safety, the
Monsanto corporation, headquartered in St. Louis, "provides the seed
technology for 90 percent of the world's genetically engineered crops."
There's
a vicious war against family farmers right now that is relentless.
Companies will even sue if farmer's non-GMO crops have been polluted by
GMO pollen and are planted without permission (see the 2005 report by
the Center for Food Safety entitled "Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers").
What
corporate agribusiness is attempting to do to independent family
farmers is not quite slavery but becoming close. It is attempting to
take away the independence of farmers through basically contract
farming. This harkens back to the oppressive sharecropping or tenant
farmer relationships set up by southern plantation owners for freed
slaves and poor white farmers in the South.
Plantation owners wanted to keep freed slaves under their yoke and make
use of their labor. So they set up a sharecropping and tenant systems
of farming with various types of contractual arrangements that
invariably benefited the plantation owners rather than the aspiring
freed slaves. So, too, it's the consolidated corporate agribusiness
companies that benefit in today's scenario rather than the farmers.
Throughout
southeast Asia, destabilization of traditional farming practices from
corporate agribusiness intervention has been rampant. In the late 1980s,
for example, I spent time with rice farmers in the Philippines. They
told me that they were encouraged to grow a new higher yielding rice
plant developed by the International Rice Institute, and it's affiliated
corporate agribusiness companies. They were excited about growing and
potentially exporting more rice. It made no sense to them that they
could not set the seed aside for next year's crop, as Filipino farmers
have done for hundreds of years. It also made no sense that the only way
the crop would be fertile was through use of fertilizers supplied by
agribusiness companies. Such chemical use was also an unknown practice
for these farmers.
The
next year, hundreds of the small rice farmers went out of business
because they couldn't afford to purchase the seed or fertilizer. I asked
them why they didn't go back to planting their old rice crops. They
told me they couldn't because they didn't have the seeds anymore as the
seed had always been set aside for the next year's crop. As a result
they were dependent on agribusiness for their seeds there was no
option. Most of the traditional Filipino rice seeds are now in U.S. seed
banks.
In the late 1990s
there were reports of some 4,000 Filipino rice farmers who died due to
pesticide (chemical poison) use. The speculation, I was told by Food
First in California, was that the higher yielding rice plant attracted a
pest the farmers had never before encountered and they were then told
to use chemical poisons that they also had never used. It's thought that
either they didn't know how to use the poisons or they used it to
commit suicide.
Most
of the world has resisted, in some way, the wholesale invasion of GMO
crops. No country in their right mind would turn over their food
sovereignty to US corporate agribusiness. Not to be defeated, corporate
agribusiness has sought loopholes in vulnerable areas in the world. They
seek regions where the implementation of their insidious schemes is
virtually a given and from which they can force the world to accept
their devastating and destabilizing agricultural model. Currently, the
US military occupied Iraq is a prime area and the continent of Africa is
another.
Corporate
agribusiness is enormously dangerous and the increased, sometimes
forced, dependency of the world's farmers on corporate agribusiness is a
threat of major proportions. Think of it! Virtually all of our
ancestors were farmers and for 13,000 years we humans have fed ourselves
quite well without the likes of Cargill and Monsanto that evolved just
decades ago. We don't need them! To further exacerbate the problem, they
make us all vulnerable for their short-term corporate greed. As Jim
Hightower, the populist and former Agriculture Commissioner of Texas,
once said, "We need to place our nation's growth not on the
Rockefellers but on the little fellers because is we do it will be based
on genius and not greed." This should be the message for every nation!
Of
necessity, most agriculture advocates would agree that agriculture
should remain primarily local and not global. This is the essence of
food security - locally controlled and produced food.
The
symbolism, much less the reality, of making Iraq's fertile crescent
into one of the major areas for GMO production would be altogether too
tantalizing for corporate agribusiness companies like Cargill and
Monsanto. Dan Amstutz obviously had input into the disastrous "transfer
of sovereignty" policies developed by the former Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Of the 100
orders left by Bremer, one is Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design,
Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety". Most
are saying that this order, if implemented, is a declaration of war
against the Iraqi farmers.
"For
generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially
unregulated, informal seed supply system.This is now history. The CPA
has made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new
varieties registered under the law. Iraqis may continue to use and save
from their traditional seed stocks or what's left of them after the
years of war and drought, but that is not the agenda for reconstruction
embedded in the ruling. The purpose of the law is to facilitate the
establishment of a new seed market in Iraq, modified or not, which
farmers would have to purchase afresh every single cropping season.
Eliminating competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these
companies (i.e. major international corporate seed traders such as
Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical). The new patent law also
explicitly promotes the commercialization of genetically modified seeds
in Iraq."
Upon
reflection, I decided this lineup of US corporate agribusiness and the
Dred Scott decision is appropriate. It is appropriate that they face
each other as they are obviously in league. To combine this with the US
military occupation of Iraq and the attempts at corporate agribusiness
abuse and control of Iraqi agriculture is mind-boggling. All three
represent a combination of greed, unjust ownership (humans, seeds etc.)
and violations of immense dimensions that impact the integrity and
safety of the planet and its inhabitants.
We
managed to legally end slavery in the United States but it took a war
to do so. Today, the world's independent farmers also need to be freed
from the oppressive yoke of corporate agribusiness and the on-going
efforts to intensify and expand this control.
Regarding
our food system overall, it is too important to be handed over to
unfettered capitalists and food should not be treated like any other
commodity. Agriculture and small farmers are just too important to us.
Let the corporate capitalists perhaps make shoes or combs or computers,
although they are probably making a mess of that as well by destroying
competition. But by all means we need to keep their slimy hands off the
substance of life - the world's agriculture production system.
HEATHER
GRAY produces "Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local,
regional, national and international news. She has been a part of the
food security movement for 25 years in Africa, Asia and the United
States. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.
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