City allotments have the ability to rival the productivity of conventional farms, according to a two-year pilot study by the University of Sussex. 

Growers in Brighton and Hove were able to harvest 1kg of insect-pollinated fruit and vegetables per sq metre in a season – which researchers said put their yields within the range of conventional farms.

Dr Beth Nicholls, who led the study is due to present her findings at Ecology Across Borders conference on Wednesday.

She said: “The growing was surprisingly productive. And some people were harvesting a lot more than that – up to 10kg per sq metre. And this is just in insect-pollinated crops, so it’s an underestimation really.” She said the study demonstrated the value of urban food production and how it could be used to reduce food deserts by growing food “closer to where people are” while also reducing food miles and transportation costs.

“The UK imports approximately £8bn of fruit and vegetables each year, but our results show that green spaces in cities, such as allotments and community gardens, could play an important role in meeting that demand at a local scale.” She explained “In a world of increasing urbanisation in both the developing and developed worlds, producing food in and around cities has the potential to improve both nutritional and health outcomes, alleviate poverty and simultaneously provide habitat for wildlife and create sustainable cities.”

There are 10,435 allotments in the UK, spanning 7,920 hectares.

City allotments could be as productive as conventional farms, research finds | Farming | The Guardian

 Three new talks have been added to the audio section, as follows –

Reading Capital as Crisis Theory – Mike Schauerte, 28th November, 2021

Socialists and the Unions – Adam Buick, 3rd December 2021

Alienation – Mike Foster, 10th December 2021

 Millions more people will die from Covid-19 in the coming year, and most will be unvaccinated. The vaccines that could save millions of lives are not reaching the poor majority of the world’s population. The contrast is stark: the current share of people fully vaccinated in high, upper-middle income, lower-middle income and low income countries is 69%, 68%, 30% and 3.5% respectively.

The UK, Canada, Germany and other EU states have supported a deliberate policy to withhold vaccines from the poorest countries in the world, and defended an immoral and unethical economic system which places big pharma patents ahead of millions of lives. 

Anthony Costello, a professor of global health at University College London and former director of the WHO’s maternal, child, and adolescent health program, wrote in The Guardian that wealthy countries’ hoarding of doses and refusal share vaccine technology could constitute “crimes against humanity” and that international lawyers should consider pursuing charges.

 The official statistics of global Covid deaths (5.2 million) greatly underestimate the real figures, which may already be more than 20 million deaths. In India, for example, analyses suggest that the real death rates are 10 times higher than the official figure of 400,000. Meanwhile, another study has found that more than 1.5 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic.

Patent-protected vaccines are sold at great profit to wealthy countries by a few pharmaceutical companies. The global vaccine price ranges from $2 (for AstraZeneca) to $37 per dose, with mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna the most expensive. Between January 2020 and December 2021 the market capitalisations of Moderna rose from $6.9bn to $134bn; Pfizer from $206bn to $314bn; and BioNTech from $6.6bn to $84bn.

What can the world do when massive financial interests are placed before the survival of millions of men, women and children? 

 One is a patent waiver. A year ago India, South Africa, Kenya and Eswatini among others called for one, so that emerging economy companies were not under threat of future litigation. The USA and France eventually supported them. But Germany, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the UK blocked this move to protect big pharma. Bill Gates, a major donor to Covax, also defended patent rights. After months of wrangling, the WTO has failed to broker an agreement.

The richest countries are vaccine hoarders. Try them in international court | Anthony Costello | The Guardian

The fastest-growing group in surveys asking Americans about their religious identity. They describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”

According to a survey released by the Pew Research Center, this group — commonly known as the “nones” — now constitutes 29% of American adults. That’s up from 23% in 2016 and 19% in 2011.

“If the unaffiliated were a religion, they’d be the largest religious group in the United States,” said Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University.

What’s your religion? In US, a common reply now is “None” | AP News

 It doesn’t take a genius to become a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon according to a recent study.

NatWest has been fined £265m after admitting it failed to prevent money-laundering of nearly £400m by one firm.

 The death toll from powerful tornadoes that devastated towns in Kentucky is likely to pass a hundred. 20 devastating tornadoes tore through multiple states and killed dozens of people. Affected states included Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. Among the buildings struck was an Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Illinois. Local officials said that at least six people died from the collapse.

The corporate giant, Amazon, was accused of putting corporate profits above worker safety following the tornado-caused partial collapse of a St. Louis-area warehouse that left at least six people dead.

“Time and time again Amazon puts its bottom line above the lives of its employees,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), in a statement. “Requiring workers to work through such a major tornado warning event as this was inexcusable.”

In his statement, Appelbaum called the event “another outrageous example of the company putting profits over the health and safety of their workers, and we cannot stand for this.”

“Amazon cannot continue to be let off the hook for putting hardworking people’s lives at risk,” he said, vowing that his union would “not back down until Amazon is held accountable for these and so many more dangerous labor practices.”

 According to figures revealed in the latest edition of Boat International’s Global Order Book, more than 1,200 superyachts are slated to be built – a rise of 25% on last year.

“The market’s never been busier,” said Will Christie, a superyacht broker. “And I’ve been in the industry 20 years…Everybody just wants freedom, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals can afford it.” 

“Whether it’s this or private jets or trips to space, they’re just sticking two fingers up at the rest of society,” said Peter Newell, a professor of international relations at Sussex University. “It’s decadent. They’re not comfortable with the constraints that come with accepting collective responsibility for the fate of the planet.”

The economic anthropologist Richard Wilk, a distinguished professor at Indiana University in the US, said: “Of course, if you add every superyacht together, it’s just a blip on total greenhouse gas production. But it is symbolic – and the global impact of the 2,000-odd billionaires on the planet are very significant. So it’s part of a pattern of overconsumption by the upper crust.”

In research with his colleague Beatriz Barros, he found that the average billionaire had a carbon footprint thousands of times that of the average person. The global average footprint of CO2 emitted per person is just under five tonnes, while they estimated that Roman Abramovich – the top polluter according to their list – was responsible for about 33,859 tonnes of carbon emitted in 2018. More than two-thirds of that was the product of his yacht, the 162.5-metre Eclipse.

Sailing away: superyacht industry booms during Covid pandemic | Coronavirus | The Guardian

 In the last issue of the World Socialist, we explained Clause Two of the World Socialist Movement’s Declaration of Principles, which is regarding the class struggle — the conflict between both of capitalism’s economic classes. In this issue, we’ll expound on Clause Three, which says:

 The 2021 Winter issue of the Socialist Party of Canada’s journal, Imagine, is now out. 

You can access the electronic version by following this link.

Of particular interest is the article by Comrade L. Gambone of Vancouver Island (pp. 3–5), who argues that nowadays the Indigenous and Ecological movements, by ‘directly challenging capital over questions of ownership and control,’ wage ‘a much higher stage of class struggle’ than the business unions, which have agreed to stick to matters like wages and working conditions.

On page 9 there is also a poem, originally published in 1909 in The Western Clarion, by Wilfrid Gribble, a member of the Socialist Party of Canada who crossed the border to Detroit and in 1916 helped to found the Workers’ Socialist Party of the United States (forerunner of today’s World Socialist Party of the United States).