A devastating new report has revealed the full extent of the crisis in the Yanomami territory caused by a massive invasion of illegal goldminers:

– Yanomami children are dying from malnutrition at a rate 191 times greater than Brazil’s average.

– Deaths of Yanomami children under five from preventable diseases are 9 times the national average.

Other data published recently emphasize the scale of the emergency afflicting the Yanomami:

– A study by UNICEF and Fiocruz reveals that eight out of ten Yanomami children under the age of five in the regions of Auaris and Maturacá have chronic malnutrition.

New photos released by the Yanomami health organization Urihi show desperately malnourished children and adults in villages of the Surucucus region. Just two weeks ago, goldminers attacked and destroyed a health clinic serving several Yanomami communities – it had already been abandoned by health workers, who feared an attack.

Survival International’s Director of Research and Advocacy Fiona Watson, who has worked with the Yanomami for more than thirty years, said today: “It’s impossible to overstate just how unprecedented and appalling the situation in the Yanomami territory is now.

“The Yanomami rarely suffer from malnutrition in normal circumstances. Their forests are bountiful; they are experts at growing, gathering and hunting everything they need, and they enjoy excellent health.

“This is a deliberate, man-made crisis, stoked by President Bolsonaro, who has encouraged the mass invasion and destruction of the Yanomami’s lands. Their rivers and fish are now polluted with toxic levels of mercury, criminal gangs control access to many of the communities, the Yanomami are being attacked, raped and killed, and their children are literally starving to death…”

Junior Hekurari Yanomami, President of the Yanomami Health District, says this is a “humanitarian crisis” and that the Yanomami “are weeping [for their dead] every day and every night. They have been mourning for months…. There are no medicines and no permanent health care.”

Shocking Health Crisis for Brazil’s Yanomami | Dissident Voice

 A record number of brownfield sites in England that have been identified for redevelopment and could provide 1.2m homes are lying dormant.

The amount of land available covered 27,342 hectares (67,563 acres) in 2022, 6% more than in 2021. It has the capacity to provide 1.2m homes at a time of nationwide housing crisis.

Brownfield sites with room for 1.2m homes unused in England, report says | Housing | The Guardian

 By mid-April, India is forecast to surpass China as the world’s most populous country.

  India’s fertility rate has also fallen substantially in recent decades – from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to two births per woman today.

  1.9m UK households failed to make at least one mortgage, rent, loan, credit card or other bill payment over the last month.

With the UK heading into recession, mortgages and rent costs rising and the energy price guarantee becoming less generous from April, consumers will only face further financial pressures in 2023 leading to more defaults, it warned.

About 4m households are likely to face higher mortgage payments in 2023, with the average monthly mortgage payment rising to £1,000 (up from £750), the equivalent of about 17% of pre-tax income.

Earlier this month the Trades Union Congress said 2022 has seen the sharpest fall in real wages since 1977 and the second worst on record since 1945. Analysis of official statistics found that real wages fell by an average of £76 a month in 2022 as a result of pay not keeping pace with inflation.

Nearly 2m UK households behind on bill payments as Christmas approaches | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

The number of UK billionaires has increased by a fifth since the onset of the Covid pandemic. 

 The number of UK billionaires increased from 147 in 2020 to 177 this year, with the median billionaire now holding about £2bn.

“This sudden explosion in extreme wealth was in large part due to measures aimed at lessening the impact of Covid-19 on the economy, as central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets, leading to a stock market boom which effectively lined the pockets of shareholders…” Jo Wittams, co-executive director of the Equality Trust, said. “…Every year we are invited to celebrate the very richest individuals and families in the UK, while food bank usage continues to increase, 3.9 million children are living in poverty and 6.7m households struggle to heat their homes. That these are two sides of the same coin is very rarely mentioned.”

Call for wealth tax as UK billionaire numbers up by 20% since pandemic | The super-rich | The Guardian

2022 had the unwelcome distinction of being the first to see over 100 million people displaced worldwide.  This milestone was reached by the middle of the year.

Over 50 million people were internally displaced within their own countries, over 30 million were refugees forced to flee their countries, and some 4.3 million were stateless.

More than 70 percent of all refugees came from five countries mired in violent conflict: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. Climate-related emergencies, meanwhile — including severe floods in Pakistan and drought in Somalia — contributed heavily to the growing number of people internally displaced.

 Between October 2018 and June 2021, the U.S. denied asylum to Haitians more than any other nationality.  Many Haitians have had to flee their country, which prompted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to call on all countries “to stand in solidarity with Haiti” and “not to return Haitians to a country that is extremely fragile.” Unfortunately, the U.S. accelerated the mass expulsion of more than 25,000 Haitians between September 2021 and May 2022. They were returned to Haiti where they face likely harm and humanitarian disaster.

Opinion | This Has Been a Horrific Year for the Globally Displaced | Farrah Hassen (commondreams.org)

 Despite animal cruelty, environmental destruction, and human health impacts factory farming provides affordable meat to our populations, creates jobs in small towns, stimulates local economies, and helps families prosper so goes the argument presented by the meat industry. It is the pig’s or your own family’s welfare. 

 Have rural communities actually experienced their purported economic benefits? Has factory farming made life easier for the people in small towns?

A 2022 report by Food and Water Watch suggests the opposite. The report takes pig farms in Iowa as a case study of how our corporate-controlled food systems are failing environments, animals, and communities.

Factory farms, facilities that raise thousands of animals in extreme confinement to maximize production and profit, operated by multibillion-dollar corporations like Smithfield and JBS now dominate the meat market. Factory farms use this dominance to set the terms for pig prices, preventing fair pricing, contributing to market volatility, and pushing down the real price of pigs. The fact that these enormous corporate firms and their equally enormous factory farms control the market is irrefutable. 

But are they at least providing more jobs on the ground for the community? Despite years of claiming the contrary, the answer is straightforward: absolutely not. The study found that between 1982 and 2017, real median household income and total wage jobs declined in the counties that sold the most pigs and had the largest farms. The population also took a steep drop, at twice the rate of Iowa’s more rural counties. Job losses, too, were commonplace. Statewide, total farm employment dropped 44% between 1982 and 2017—the boom years for factory farming.

The results of this study are clear: Factory farming is bad for the economy, driving up the price of pigs without returning profits to local farmers. It puts local farms out of business and results in net job loss. Families suffer hardship as incomes decline, and property values diminish due to rampant pollution from factory farms.  It ensures that factory-farmed pigs grow up and die in misery, while our climate catastrophe worsens, human health deteriorates, and local communities suffer.

 Meat consumption increases the risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, pneumonia, and more, the meat industry’s routine use of antibiotics to protect their bottom line results in antibiotic resistance in both farmed animals and the people who eat them.

Factory farms are not good for local communities. Who are factory farms good for? Large corporations. Factory farming—and its corporate chokehold on rural communities—is just as brutal to humans as it is to animals.

The meat industry has created a false dichotomy that pits people against animals – Alternet.org

 How should we refer to the children of immigrants? The traditional answer is “second-generation immigrants”, yet “first-generation locals” is far more accurate, as a new research paper co-authored by Alan Manning, one of the UK’s top economists, points out.

The key issue for first-generation locals isn’t that their parents are migrants – it’s that they are often poor.

Class, not parents’ place of birth, determines the life chances of ‘first-generation locals’ | Torsten Bell | The Guardian

 Many American workers are suffering the mental and financial anguish of being suddenly laid off. After corporations complained of labor shortages through 2021 and 2022, several companies have shed workers in mass layoffs as 2022 comes to a close. Numerous high-profile tech companies, including Facebook’s Meta, Twitter and Amazon, announced mass layoffs in recent weeks.

Catalent, a pharmaceutical manufacturing contractor, recently informed employees the company is going to cut about 600 jobs in Indiana, Texas, and Maryland over the next several weeks, as demand for Covid vaccines has dropped significantly. Other corporations have announced mass layoffs right before the holidays, claiming economic downturns have driven the cuts, even as they record profits and the economy showing no signs of a downturn. 

Stellantis, which manufactures the Jeep Cherokee SUV, announced on 9 December the closure of an Illinois plant resulting in more than 1,200 workers being laid off by the end of February 2023. 

“It came without the slightest bit of warning and absolutely no details. It wasn’t even a rumor so it just dropped like a bomb,” said Deanna Viel, a worker at the plant Belvidere, Illinois.

Right before Thanksgiving, about 2,700 workers at United Furniture – a company that has facilities in Mississippi, California and North Carolina – received an email notifying them they were laid off immediately.

“These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it,” said Stanford Graduate School of Business Prof Jeffrey Pfeffer on the recent trend of tech companies shedding employees. “Layoffs often do not cut costs, as there are many instances of laid-off employees being hired back as contractors, with companies paying the contracting firm. Layoffs often do not increase stock prices, in part because layoffs can signal that a company is having difficulty. Layoffs do not increase productivity. Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision.” 

 A study by UK researchers found a layoff to be the 7th most stressful life experience, correlated to significant increases in developing a new health condition as well as the risk of suicide, depression and substance abuse.

‘Heartless’ mass layoffs hit US workers ahead of holidays | Business | The Guardian

 Today, the world is facing a never before seen web of crises that will continue to have severe consequences for many years to come. 

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), more than 828 million people are going to bed hungry every night. 

The number of those facing acute food insecurity has more than doubled, from 135 million to 345 million, since 2019, and nearly 50 million people are already on the verge of starvation.

 The world is becoming more polarised every day, with social cohesion eroding and conflict increasing. This crisis is a testament to the high levels of interdependence in the modern world. It demonstrates we cannot continue with an “Us vs Them” rhetoric while “our” well-being is so deeply reliant on “their” actions and vice versa.  The only way to resolve crises and protect lives is through solidarity and collaboration. 

The world’s food system is more interconnected and complex than ever, built upon layers of transnational dependencies. It is why a war in Europe can exacerbate a famine in Somalia.

But instead of reducing the fragility of the food system, the latest international efforts led by the United States to end hunger are only exacerbating it — especially for Africa — by globalising the system further. When the world is under severe stress, globalisation is not a strength but a weakness, not a foundation for the system’s stability but a reason for its fragility. Any calamity anywhere in the world — whether a viral outbreak, drought or conflict — is a shock to the entire system, but one felt most acutely by the most vulnerable people and in the most vulnerable places. It does not mean that the global agricultural system lacks any advantages. Absent any shocks, it is capable of producing and distributing food with extreme efficiency. 

80 percent of the world’s population depends at least partly on food imports to eat, and the money they spend on imported food has tripled in the past 25 years. 

About half of the 50 countries with the highest pandemic-induced price increases are also among the countries most dependent on food imports, and about three-quarters of those crops originate in the Global South.

 More than 95 percent of Botswana, Mexico, and Jamaica’s imports of rice, wheat, and corn are from countries most affected by the pandemic, making countries like them disproportionately vulnerable to its disruptive effects.

The US government’s USAID long-term response will be to invest an additional $75m in “large-scale food fortification”, or adding nutrients to commodity cereal crops through industrial processing. African farmers have been cultivating nutrient-rich crops for as long as they have existed. Instead of helping them to provide nutritious diets to African people, the USAID plan only makes room for them to produce commodities for factories.

With the world’s attention shifting towards the climate impact of agriculture, US officials and agribusiness companies have tried to recast the industrial model as a solution to that problem as well with he new greenwashing campaign, dubbed “climate-smart agriculture”.

 A 2018 study, scholars from the University of British Columbia found that farm-level biodiversity has decreased as farms have grown bigger. Today, just three crops — wheat, corn and rice — overwhelmingly produced in just five countries comprise nearly half of all calories consumed globally and 86 percent of all cereal exports. The focus on just a few crops has made the market extremely prone to price volatility. Worse still, it concentrates power in the hands of those farmers with the most land, capital and technology, along with the multinational grain traders who rake in massive profits during food crises. With the entire system engineered to exclude them, small and medium farmers who still produce almost half of the world’s food calories are being set up to lose.

 Jennifer Clapp, a member of the UN High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, described the world’s current food system as rigid, inflexible, and unable to adapt to shocks like war or a pandemic. It is because Clapp says, the current hunger spike is the third such crisis in 50 years, and why more crises are highly likely in the future. Clapp, along with many food sovereignty organisations argued that the global food system needed to be dismantled in favour of more localised systems with shorter supply chains that put small and medium farmers — not multinational corporations — at their centre.

How can we end the hunger pandemic? | Opinions | Al Jazeera

Globalised food systems are making hunger worse | Food | Al Jazeera