India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
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.
Food prices are rising due to a combination of an engineered food crisis for geopolitical reasons, financial speculation by hedge funds, and profiteering by global grain trade conglomerates. In addition, agribusiness forms are using this crisis as an opportunity to promote GE technologies.
We see an abundance of food but skyrocketing prices. The issue is not food shortage but speculation on food commodities and the manipulation of an inherently flawed global food system. It is not the first time the U.S. has engineered a major crisis to maintain global hegemony.
June 2022 marks 60 years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s iconic book ‘Silent Spring’, that documented the adverse impact of indiscriminate use of pesticides on the environment. Since then, Monsanto has mounted a deceitful defence of its health- and environment-damaging pesticides and orchestrated toxic smear campaigns against Carson and other scientist campaigners.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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