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Resources: Agriculture

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Plantations and Colonialism
Larry Lohmann

15 December 2011

The distinction between industrial tree plantations and biodiverse landscapes organized in conjunction with commons regimes is not just a distinction between various vegetable assemblages, but also a social/technical/political distinction. The slave-worked plantations of the past and the industrial plantations of today do not merely prop up colonialism; they are constituted by colonialism. Today's industrial plantations are also intertwined with overaccumulation, overproduction, financialization, and many other so-called "social" things.

application/pdf iconPlantationsandColonialism.pdf

Building Markets or Building Society
Responses to Food Speculation
Nicholas Hildyard

20 September 2010

 Some 154 million people were reportedly driven further into poverty in Southern countries as a result of speculation-induced food price hikes in 2007-08. What are the best strategies for bringing about the structural change needed that progressive activists can lend their support to?

This workshop presentation, while endorsing regulatory measures including banning certain investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds and vetting of derivative-based financial instruments, cautions against becoming focussed on regulation alone as an answer. Also crucial is the promotion of non-derivative, socially-based mechanisms to protect farmers and consumers from volatile food prices, as well as price interventions that do not pit Northern farmers against their Southern counterparts.

application/pdf iconBuildingMarkets.pdf

Genetic Engineering in Agriculture
Whose Risks? Whose Gains?
Nicholas Hildyard

2 November 1998

A summary of the ecological risks of genetic engineering in agriculture and suggestions for resisting its introduction.

Food? Health? Hope?
Genetic Engineering and World Hunger
Sarah Sexton, Nicholas Hildyard and Larry Lohmann

30 October 1998

10. The biotechnology industry claims that genetic engineering in agriculture is necessary to feed a growing world population. Yet, far from preventing world starvation, genetic engineering threatens to exacerbate the social and ecological causes of hunger by forcing farmers to pay for their right to fertile seeds, threatening crop yields, undermining biodiversity and reducing the access of poorer people to food.

Ten Reasons Why GE Crops Won’t Feed the World
The Corner House

1 June 1998

There are at least 10 good reasons why the widespread adoption of genetic engineering in agriculture will lead to more hungry people, not fewer.

Too Many for What?
The Social Generation of Food “Scarcity” and “Overpopulation”
Nicholas Hildyard

1 November 1996

Discussions of population and food supply that leave out the relationships of power between different groups of people will always mask the true nature of food scarcity -- who gets to eat and who doesn’t -- and lead to “solutions” that are simplistic, frequently oppressive and that, ultimately, reinforce the very structures creating ecological damage and hunger. 

Sustainable Agriculture -- For Whom?
Nicholas Hildyard

1 June 1996

This presentation to the Soil Association's Annual Conference recognises that the UK government has publicly renounced industrialised, chemical-based agriculture in favour of “sustainable agriculture”. Under Agenda 21, the action plan for sustainable development signed at the Rio Earth Summit (UNCED) in 1992, it is committed to Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development or SARD, drawn up by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Yet SARD’s understanding of people’s participation, land reform, sustainable agriculture and environmental protection are quite different from that of many people’s movements. For SARD, participation is about engineering consent and getting people to participate in implementing decisions that have already been taken by someone else. SARD calls for land reform to promote is agribusiness’ access to land, not people’s control over it. And despite the rhetoric, SARD is about agricultural intensification. Overall, the policy is the same, but the language has changed.