EDITORIAL

Support the German Farmers’ August 26 Berlin Demonstration!
No Cuts to Farming Anywhere! The Hungry Shall Be Fed!

by Robert L. Baker

[Print version of this editorial]

Aug. 14—German farmers will launch a demonstration in Berlin, August 26, continuing it as a “365” non-stop action, until the goal is met to end the policies now ruining farming, and cutting food production. This backs the protest initiatives of the Dutch farmers, and others taking actions in Italy, Spain, Ireland, Poland, Chile, Canada, and elsewhere, including the U.S. cattlemen, fighting in the courts and legislatures. India’s farmers have led the way. The particulars differ from place to place, but it’s the same battle.

A constellation of international financial, environmentalist and corporate interests have set in motion a worldwide policy to reduce food production and eliminate family farming. The farmers and ranchers are defending food production to save humanity. That’s why people in all walks of life must wake up and support them.

The world is in a food emergency of Biblical proportions. Over 800 million people are hungry, and millions of those are heading to starvation. Within a year, these numbers could double.

The knowhow exists to end this crisis. We must expand the number of family farms, not shut them down. But farmers and ranchers are under attack.

Attacks on Farming

Drastic cuts to agriculture inputs and practices are underway under the excuse of preventing global warming. Within the framework of the Green Deal, in May 2020, the European Union launched the “Farm-to-Fork Strategy” ordering a 20% cut in fertilizer use, a 10% cut in land used in agriculture, a 50% cut in crop protection chemicals and microbials for livestock, etc. This will ruin farmers and cut food for millions. But compliance is ordered by 2030, with earlier deadlines set. The governments in the Netherlands, Germany, and some others among the 27 EU nations have dictated even more severe cuts. Dutch farmers are being told to get rid of 30% of their cattle, to prevent nitrogenous and carbon run-off and emissions. In the Americas, Ottawa has ordered Canadian farmers to cut fertilizer. In the U.S., 30% of land and water is to be locked out of agriculture use by 2030.

Global cartels continue to dominate markets and pricing within nations, and enforce trade patterns between nations, to the detriment of all farmers and populations involved. One nation is forced to be an “export source” region. Another nation is forced to be import dependent. The cartel tyranny works through the transnational agro-inputs suppliers, to the processors, shippers, and food retailers. These globalist interests—the commodities wing of Wall Street and the City of London—are interlocked entirely with the mega-banks pushing “Green Finance,” and with the network of the World Wildlife Fund and related circles using “concern for nature” to shut down production and cause human depopulation.

Hyperinflation and shortages of agriculture inputs are at the point of breakdown. The out-of-control prices of fuels, fertilizer, electricity, chemicals, and other farming inputs, along with worsening scarcity of supply, and collapse of logistics, guarantees famine. But neither remedies nor multi-national collaboration for solutions are yet coming from the government/financial centers of the trans-Atlantic and Group of Seven (G7) nations. Instead, they are imposing economic sanctions, continuing with mega-bank bail-outs, hiking interest rates, and refusing to cooperate with other nations and groupings seeking to expand food output, e.g., the African Union, or the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

Take Emergency Action

The sources of today’s attacks on agriculture have also prevented the construction of the large-scale infrastructure projects for water and power that would defend against predictable weather extremes—drought, floods, heatwaves, storms.

For all these reasons, world food output is now falling dangerously. World “total grains”—the staff of life (wheat, rice, corn/maize, and others) is going down by millions of tons. Instead of a world harvest of over 4 billion tons of grain, we now produce less than 3 billion tons a year, and it is dropping. For 8 billion people, we need to double world food production.

The basic steps to take include: 1) mobilize to maximize inputs for the coming crop seasons in all farmbelts possible; 2) provide the aid needed to maintain and expand livestock; 3) suspend and/or cancel all green orders to restrict and cut agriculture; 4) override food cartel practices wherever they are detrimental to the national interests involved; unwind and prevent trans-national monopoly farming, and start priority anti-trust action; 5) stop the run-away food speculation on the Chicago, London and other commodity exchanges; 6) take measures to stabilize prices received and paid by the farmer, on the parity principle; 7) take measures to back young families starting up, toward a million new family farms in the United States alone; 8) re-regulate banking on the Glass-Steagall principle, to restore sound banking, with no more bail-outs to the mega-banks; 9) direct credit into the overdue infrastructure projects (water, rail, power) on every continent, to support existing and vast new farmbelts; 10) back collaboration on these priorities among major nations—especially including Russia, China, and India—and in the immediate term, work together to deliver emergency food aid to all points of need.

The Hungry Shall Be Fed

Food is not a “farmer’s issue.” The German farmers’ initiative in Berlin this month, is taking the point for action we need worldwide for people to restore sovereignty to their respective nations and put in place policies in the common interest of all peoples, starting with food.

Let nations work together to come up with a new world economic framework, of mutual benefit. More farmers and ranchers, and more food!

Farmers and ranchers of the world joining together is the powerful moral force that can bring the world back on track. Stand alongside the German farmers in Berlin!