Farmers Seek Defenses Against the Giants of Agribusiness
(((( T h e B u l l e t )))) A Socialist Project e-bulletin …. No. 96 …. April 4, 2008
Around the world, farm income is plummeting, pushing farmers off the land and into destitution. At the very same time, soaring food prices are putting tens of millions onto starvation diets.
Welcome to the bizarre world of capitalist agriculture, where the drive to boost profits of giant transnational corporations is imperiling the production of our means of survival.
Suzanne Weiss and I sought insight into this crisis by talking to farmers who live close to us – in Grey County, 200 kilometers north-west of Toronto. We had been invited there to report on farming in Venezuela to the local unit of the National Farmers Union. (See www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=267). Our hosts took time to give us an education in Grey County agricultural economics.
“What is the one single measure that would do the most to help farmers in Ontario?” I asked Rae MacIntyre, president of the Grey County local of the National Farmers Union (NFU).
“Open up food markets to local producers,” he replied. “That would transform the situation.”
MacIntyre’s stress on “local food” reveals how much ground has been lost by Grey County’s 160 NFU members – and their 50,000 farmer colleagues across Ontario – during recent decades of big-business attacks on farmers and degradation of the food system. The challenge before farmers is no longer merely low prices for farm products. They are now almost entirely excluded from grocery-store shelves.
Check out your local supermarket: almost every food product has traveled 3,000 kilometers or more to reach the store.
** Exploited producers **
But more is at stake. Farmers are working people, exploited by big-business profiteering. Despite the supposed advantages of large-scale farming, Canada has very few capitalist factory-farms worked by hired labour. The great majority of operations are “family farms,” where family members do most or all of the work.
Some working farmers employ seasonal labourers under the government’s oppressive migrant-labour programs. Defense of these workers must be a top priority of the labour movement as a whole. But the primary blame for this shameful system falls on the government that designed it, and the capitalist market that requires it.
Farmers are self-employed and must get by on what their products fetch on a hostile market. Many farmers have been subjugated by onerous contracts with giant corporate customers. They are exploited by big-business suppliers, buyers, and banks just as workers at General Motors or Wal-Mart are.
The last two decades of cutbacks, layoffs, and concession contracts, which wage workers know as “neoliberalism,” hit farmers with extra severity. In that time, 25% of Canada’s farms disappeared.
Click here to continue reading: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet096.html#continue
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Bullet is produced by the Socialist Project. Readers are encouraged to distribute widely. Comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome. Write to info@socialistproject.ca
If you wish to subscribe: http://www.socialistproject.ca/lists/?p=subscribe
The Bullet archive is available at http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet