Colin Todhunter We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agrifood chain. The high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose a certain type of agriculture and food production on the world. …
Colin Todhunter The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an assortment of high-profile figures and policymakers are pushing for unregulated gene-editing technologies, the rollout of bio-synthetic food created in laboratories, the expanded use of patented seeds and the rollback of subsidies and support for farmers in places like India. These neoliberal evangelists despise democracy and …
Seed is the base of all life. Recognizing this obvious fact, farmers for well over a hundred generations and for several thousand years cared for seeds, respected seeds, and helped to promote a great diversity of seeds. Hence they had different seeds for different needs, for different weather conditions, for different kinds of land and soil. Diverse varieties of seeds[Read More...]
In many parts of the world there is a yearning on the part of farmers to break free from the increasingly exploitative grip of big business interests trying to dominate farming and food systems. As a result, despite the very worrying reality of the increasing domination of big business in many countries led by the USA, there is[Read More...]
In most discussions on food and farming systems in India a concern that comes up time and again is that pressures and particular interpretations of the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can increase problems of India’s farmers and the public distribution system (PDS) for food. A large number of India’s mostly small farmers face a number of[Read More...]
Keeping in view the increasing concerns worldwide to check increasing corporate control over farming and food systems, there is a need to look more carefully at various forms of this increasing corporatization and consider carefully various ways and means of resisting this. Firstly there is the increasing trend of land grab. This can be more clearly seen in the purchase[Read More...]
One of the most creative endeavors of farmers all over the world but even more so in tropical countries has been to protect , promote and nurture a diversity of crop varieties. They continued to do so for thousands of years and for well over a hundred generation. As a result of this , over a period of around five[Read More...]
It is well recognized that not all traditions are goods. Some widespread aspects of many traditional societies like discrimination and inequality at various levels ( such as caste, gender and class) need to be rejected completely. However there are several other aspects relating to the wisdom accumulating over centuries regarding farming and allied activities, forestry, water conservation, crafts and related[Read More...]
The world’s 10 richest billionaires have collectively seen their wealth increase by $540bn over this period. In September 2020, Jeff Bezos could have paid all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still be as wealthy as he was before COVID.
Colin Todhunter With over 800 million people, rural India is arguably the most interesting and complex place on the planet but is plagued by farmer suicides, child malnourishment, growing unemployment, increased informalisation, indebtedness and an overall collapse of agriculture. Given that India is still an agrarian-based society, renowned journalist P Sainath says what is taking place can …
