India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
Nearly four years after India’s historic year-long farmers’ protests forced the repeal of three pro-corporate farm laws, it is clear that the government’s underlying agenda of corporatisation (recolonisation) is being advanced through bureaucratic schemes, digital agriculture partnerships and policy frameworks in the name of promoting ‘efficiency’ and ‘modernisation’.
The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a coalition of 40+ farmers’ unions, contends that the Centre is proposing to undermine the federal rights of state governments by surrendering India’s food security and compromising its national sovereignty under the slogan ‘One Nation, One Market’.
A new report says that agricultural land is increasingly being turned into a financial asset at the expense of small- and medium-scale farming. Agribusiness and investors are seeking to secure land for export commodity production and urging governments to deregulate land markets and adopt pro-investor policies.
The modern food system is responsible for making swathes of humanity ill, causing unnecessary suffering and sending many people to an early grave. It is part of a grotesque food-pharma conveyor belt that results in massive profits for the dominant agrifood and pharmaceuticals corporations.
The World Bank says nearly 80% (560 million) of the 700 million people who were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 due to COVID policies were from India. Globally, extreme poverty levels increased by 9.3 per cent in 2020.
Industry figures and scientists claim pesticide use and GMOs are necessary in ‘modern agriculture’. But this is not the case: there is now sufficient evidence to suggest otherwise. It is simply not necessary to have our bodies contaminated with toxic agrochemicals.
Bhaskar Save died on 24 October 2015 at age 93. Emphasising self-reliance at the farm/village level, Save was regarded as the ‘Gandhi of natural farming’. In 2006 he published an open letter on the disastrous effects of green revolution for India – socially, economically and ecologically. We reproduce this letter here.
From farm to fork the food system is littered with scams and what should be scandals.
Why is much modern food of inferior quality? Why is health suffering and smallholder farmers being forced out of agriculture? Mainly because of the likes of Larry Fink of BlackRock – the world’s biggest asset management firm – and the economic system they profit from and promote.
A recent study found that increased consumption of ultraprocessed foods was associated with more than 10% of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019. And Brazilians consume far less of these products than countries with high incomes, implying the impact would be higher in richer nations.
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