The United Nations will host a Global Food Systems Summit in New York in September on the future of agriculture. Many peasant and indigenous movements from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas that collectively represent most of the world’s small-scale food producers have called for a total boycott of this summit. La Via Campesina and the World Forum of Fisher People, among many others, have refused to join the preliminary consultations set up by the organisers and stand firm in their decision to boycott the summit. They are supported by scientists, researchers, faculty members, and educators who work in agriculture and food systems, who also issued a call to boycott the event. The summit is firmly in the hands of “experts” known to be staunch defenders of industrial agriculture, and are driving the agenda. 

The current and the two former Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food have criticised the current format of the summit for not building on past food summit experiences and pointed out that “the CFS [the UN’s Committee on World Food Security] already has the structure that the Summit organizers have been hastily reconstructing”.

 Food sovereignty is the right of people to determine their food and agricultural systems. It addresses the people’s most urgent and pressing need: to have healthy, nutritious and climatically appropriate food grown in their locality or neighbourhood. Agroecological and localised peasant production of food respects and co-exists with our natural surroundings and promotes humanist principles of solidarity and collectivism. It keeps away from harmful pesticides and chemical fertilisers and fosters a diversity of nutritious crops, unlike the industry practice of monocropping. 

Small-scale farmers play a crucial role in creating sustainable food systems. Small farms make a huge contribution to global food security, producing at least 30% of global food. In sub-Saharan Africa, the role of small-scale farms is even more significant, accounting for 80% of the food produced. Africa has the ability to feed the world. Progress in African agriculture has been impressive — production is up 160%over the past 30 years, far above the global average of 100%.

 Globally, around 500 million small-scale farms support the livelihoods of more than two billion people. Yet only 1.7% of climate finance goes to small farms. This is a tiny fraction of what is needed.

A handful of transnational companies dominate the current global food and commodity trade. For instance, just two firms – Dow Dupont and Monsanto-Bayer Crop Science – hold a 53 percent market share in the seed industry. Merely three firms own 70 percent of the global agrochemical industry that manufactures and sells chemicals and pesticides used on crops. This corporate concentration is also evident in the livestock breeding sector, animal pharmaceutical industry, farming machinery, commodity trade and so forth.

Therefore, from the sowing of seeds and growing of crops to the processing, distribution, and consumption of food, transnational agribusinesses control and decide everything. Most of these corporations are now entering into partnerships with Big Tech firms to digitalise the global food system to cement their dominance.

But here is what is striking about these giant corporations. Despite their control over nearly 75 percent of the world’s food production-related natural resources, they can barely feed a third of the global population. Furthermore, they are responsible for most of the $400bn worth of food lost annually and for the emission of large amounts of greenhouse gases.

The small-scale farmers, fisherfolk, farmworkers, peasants, pastoralists and Indigenous people – with barely a quarter of the world’s food-production-related natural resources to their name and often neglected in public policies – continue to provide about 70 percent of the world’s food. Their web of local small-scale food producers stepped up in every corner of the world when the industrial food supply chain crumbled under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet, when it comes to defining the future of our food system, guess who gets invited by the UN to conceive and construct the plan, principles and content of the global summit. It is big agribusinesses.

 Instead, we need to care about the people who plant the seeds around us, the world’s smallholder farmers. They are the custodians of our planet. Small farms actually have higher crop yields than larger farms, when the landscape conditions are similar. They also have much more biodiversity — not only of crops, but also more insect and animal life along the edges of the fields. Without a safe and secure food system, without crop biodiversity and pollinators, we could all face food scarcity

Here is why we are boycotting the UN Food Systems Summit | Food | Al Jazeera

Opinion: Small farms are the future of food systems | Opinion | DW | 25.07.2021

 Is it a coincidence or evidence of a global pattern?

The monsoon season in India lasts from June to September each year.

Torrential downpours have lashed India’s western coast in recent days, leaving dozens missing near the financial capital of Mumbai and causing the worst floods in decades in the resort state of Goa and  Maharashtra.

“People have lost virtually everything,” said Goa’s health minister, Vishwajit Rane, adding the state had not seen such heavy rains in half a century.

In Maharashtra, major rivers are at risk of bursting their banks. Some 90,000 people have been evacuated so far in the state.

Roxy Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said the monsoon flooding was “unprecedented, but not unexpected”. He tweeted: “We already see a threefold rise in widespread extreme rains that cause floods across India.”

The climate crisis is making India’s monsoons stronger, according to a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research report published in April that forecast dire consequences for food, farming and the economy affecting nearly a fifth of the world’s population.

India floods: rescuers search for survivors among mud and debris | India | The Guardian

 Adding to the woes of Lebanon is a report from the United Nations that has warned that more than four million people in Lebanon, including one million refugees, risk losing access to safe water.

“UNICEF estimates that most water pumping will gradually cease across the country in the next four to six weeks.”

The UN agency said that maintenance costs incurred in US dollars, funding shortages and the parallel collapse of the power grid were rapidly destroying the water sector.

UNICEF said that should the public water supply system collapse, water costs could jump by 200 percent a month as water would be secured from private water suppliers.

The UN agency said it needed $40m a year to secure the minimum levels of fuel, chlorine, spare parts and maintenance required to keep critical systems operational.

“Unless urgent action is taken, hospitals, schools and essential public facilities will be unable to function,” UNICEF Representative in Lebanon, Yukie Mokuo, said.

Lebanon’s economic meltdown has propelled more than half of its population into poverty and seen its currency lose more than 90 percent of its value in less than two years. The financial crisis has translated into severe shortages of basic goods such as fuel and medicine as dollars run dry. The Lebanese pound, which for years was pegged to the US dollar, has lost more than 90 percent of its value over the past 18 months. Electricity in most places is barely available an hour a day while the fuel needed to power generators is also in short supply. Basic medicines have been missing from pharmacy shelves for months and private hospitals warned on Thursday they were “hours away” from losing all power supply.

Millions of Lebanese risk losing access to safe water: UNICEF | Middle East News | Al Jazeera

 Thousands of Hungarians have joined the annual Budapest Pride march to support LGBTQ people and protest against a law that limits teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues in schools.

Demonstrators at the march through the streets of central Budapest on Saturday said the legislation was divisive. Organisers said in a statement the rally would show opposition to “power-hungry politicians” and reject intimidation of LGBTQ people.

“Instead of protecting minorities, the Fidesz-Christian Democrat government is using laws to make members of the LGBTQ community outcasts in their own country,” they said.

Populist Victor Orbán owes much of his success to a tough line on immigration but that issue has receded from the political agenda, so his focus has shifted to gender and sexuality.

 Breaking the Silence (BtS), an Israeli charity staffed by IDF  veterans, said its new publication shows that the Israeli military is increasingly part of sustaining an “ecosystem of violence” in the Palestinian occupied territories because they provide a “cloak of protection” for the settlers who are becoming more aggressive. Israel’s security forces are complicit in a “drastic surge” in violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

BtS’s advocacy director, Ori Givati, their new report, shows “that there is no action nor will from the government or the military to stop settlers from attacking”. He explained that “This is part of a very well-planned strategic mission of the settlers to take over more and more of Palestinian land,” he said.

He said that “Settler violence is not committed in a vacuum. They are the biggest criminal enterprise in Israel, and not only are they immune from repercussions but they receive embracement from the military and government.”

BtS said its report illustrates the impunity of violent settlers to legal consequence, the lack of clear orders for soldiers regarding managing settlers and what the group calls the “duplicitous relationship’” between settlers and soldiers, “at times nurturing close relationship with the soldiers, and at the next moment enacting violence towards them”.

Data from the United Nations and, separately, data collated by Israeli rights group B’Tselem, shows a marked increase in violent incidents committed by Israeli settlers compared with previous years.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that more Palestinians were injured either by settlers or members of the Israeli security forces in attacks in the first six months of this year than in the whole of 2020. This was almost on par with the yearly total in 2019.

According to B’Tselem, they have logged a 33 per cent increase in attacks during the first six months of 2021 compared with the same period last year. The group said this was “enacted with an increasingly open cooperation by Israel’s security forces and with the full backing of Israeli authorities”.

 B’Tselem told The Independent. “This violence is a constant element of Israel’s apartheid regime, aspiring to remove Palestinians from their lands in order to facilitate their takeover,” it added.

According to Israeli monitoring group Peace Now, the surge in violence also tallies with a spike in settlement expansion in the West Bank – in particular, the soaring numbers of outposts.

“Settlers see themselves as a state within a state,” the former captain said. “Some of them openly talk about arming militia groups in order to fight the Israeli army if they ever change policy and try to enforce the laws against the Palestinians against them.”

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’

Venue: Fircroft College, Birmingham

Dates: 14th-16th July 2000

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’ – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

Transferred from tape cassettes. Some of the discussion sections are of very poor quality. The worst parts have been deleted and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

1 An Evening With William Morris – Edwin Walters (14th July 2000)

2 The Utopian Tradition – Steve Coleman (15th July 2000)

3 Morris and the Romantic Movement – Ron Cook (15th July 2000)

4 The Stateless Society – Richard Headicar (15th July 2000)

5 A Dream of John Ball – Adam Buick (16th July 2000)

6 From Nowhere to Somewhere – Paddy Shannon and Stan Parker (16th July 2000)

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’

Venue: Fircroft College, Birmingham

Dates: 14th-16th July 2000

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’ – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

Transferred from tape cassettes. Some of the discussion sections are of very poor quality. The worst parts have been deleted and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

1 An Evening With William Morris – Edwin Walters (14th July 2000)

2 The Utopian Tradition – Steve Coleman (15th July 2000)

3 Morris and the Romantic Movement – Ron Cook (15th July 2000)

4 The Stateless Society – Richard Headicar (15th July 2000)

5 A Dream of John Ball – Adam Buick (16th July 2000)

6 From Nowhere to Somewhere – Paddy Shannon and Stan Parker (16th July 2000)

 Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the French luxury retail chain Luis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, or LVMH for short — has been vying for first place in the global personal wealth rankings all this spring. He currently sits in the second spot, with  $186.3 billion, behind only Jeff Bezos and in front of Elon Musk.

Arnault’s LVMH owns over 70 luxury brands, everything from Tiffany and Givenchy to Christian Dior. Much of those billions will be coming from that narrow slice of humanity that marketers to the super-rich have dubbed “ultra-high net worth individuals,” affluents who hold at least $30 million in net worth. Global wealth researchers at Knight Frank count some 520,000 of these ultras. LVMH, for its part, counts on their profligacy.  The world’s wealthy have found themselves with the wherewithal to buy enough luxury to make Arnault the world’s leading purveyor of nonessential amenities the richest man on the face of the Earth.

 Arnault, naturally, has a yacht. His 333-foot Symphony cost him $150 million a few years back and features a glass-bottom swimming pool on the main deck. Yachts this enormous require a sizeable outlay for annual expenses. Keeping the Symphony afloat, for instance, takes a 27-person crew. Owners of super yachts need to spend 10 percent of their boat’s purchase price on annual operating costs. Arnault is most likely spending $15 million a year to keep his superyacht in preparedness. Well over 99 percent of the world’s population, we should probably keep in mind, will labour their entire lives and not come close to ever amassing $15 million.

Germany’s Bremerhaven shipyard in March launched an eight-deck 476-foot-long superyacht  that set billionaire Roman Abramovich back $610 million. Abramovich has a nearly $20-billion net worth. If his investments return a modest 5 percent this year, he can pay for his 476-footer and still end the year comfortably richer than he rated when the year started.

Living Ever Larger in the Lap of Luxury – Consortiumnews

The Chinese Communist Party’s inaugural congress was on 23rd 1921although the centennial celebrations began on the 1st of July. It has been a hundred years of delusion with many political commentators still bestowing praise and plaudits upon the CCP for its progress and perseverance.

China’s economic performance belies the inequality across the country. The have-nots still outnumber the haves by a huge margin. 

The very first line of the Chinese Communist party’s constitution declares it is “the vanguard of the Chinese working class” It mentions “revolution” eight times.

The thoughts of Chairman Mao have been devoid of meaning for years.  Instead the concept of “Socialism With Chinese Characteristics” was added to the party constitution in 1992 which became “Deng Xiaoping Theory”. Now it is President Xi’s position that is prominent and prevalent.

With over 1,058 billionaires, according to the 2021 Hurun Global Rich List, China now has more ultra-wealthy than any other country on Earth – including capitalist bastion the United States. China’s ultra-rich added an unprecedented $1.5 trillion to their wealth in 2020 at the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The Communist Party maintains a monopoly of power and control. It is a conservative reactionary party bent on preserving the power of state capitalist elites Corruption thrives in areas under state control, such as land sales and infrastructure. The Chinese Communist Party helped to rationalise the existence of the state, wages, dictatorships, patriotism, investments, savings, inheritance, money, taxes and so forth, by apparently bestowing the title “socialist” as an implied prefix to all this evidence that conspicuously characterise a capitalist society.

According to Wikipedia statistics, the CCP currently has 90.59 million members. As of 30 June 2016, individuals who identify as farmers, herdsmen and fishermen make up 26 million members; members identifying as workers totalled 7.2 million. Another group, the “managing, professional and technical staff in enterprises and public institutions”, made up 12.5 million, 9 million identified as working in administrative staff and 7.4 million described themselves as party cadres.

For the Chinese Communist Party and the elites that buttress the political system, calls for more democracy is seen as a threat to their grip on power.

 Across Brazil, Latin America’s most populous nation, researchers say 19 million people have gone hungry since the start of a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 540,000. So far only about 16% of citizens have been fully vaccinated.

An additional 117 million people – more than half of Brazil’s population – experienced food insecurity.

There has been soaring unemployment. Nearly 8m jobs have been lost 

Economist Monica de Bolle said the government’s distribution of emergency payments last year had been wise and partly effective, keeping millions of families and many businesses afloat. But the failure to combine that policy, which has now been dramatically scaled back, with an effective public health response had been disastrous.

 “It’s really a terrible, terrible tragedy because we’ve wasted … the opportunity to bring this thing under control – and if we’d done that we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in now.”

 Things are dire. Residents of Rio’s 1,000-plus favelas, home to perhaps 20% of its population, are facing tough times as rising food prices compound their woes.

‘Hunger has returned’: Covid piles further misery on Brazil’s vulnerable | Brazil | The Guardian