Tens of thousands of Indian farmers continue to protest in and around New Delhi, the national capital against agricultural legislation they say could be exploited by the private sector to buy their crops at low prices. Police had used tear gas, water cannon and baton charges to block the demonstrations from arriving but eventually the farmers were allowed to enter the city.

 Farmers and their unions have rejected laws, which were passed in September which they say could cause the government to stop buying grain at guaranteed prices and result in their exploitation by corporations that would buy their crops cheaply.

“We are fighting for our rights. We won’t rest until we reach the capital and force the government to abolish these black laws,” said Majhinder Singh Dhaliwal, a farmer activist.

Farmers have long been seen as the heart and soul of India, where agriculture supports more than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people. But farmers have also seen their economic clout diminish over the last 30 years. Once accounting for a third of India’s gross domestic product, they now produce only 15 percent of the country’s $2.9 trillion economy. Farmers often complain of being ignored and hold frequent protests to demand better crop prices, more loan waivers and irrigation systems to guarantee water supplies during dry spells.

Darshan Pal of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) and Punjab president of Krantikari Kisan Union, said “They [government] have actually opened the markets, open the land and open the commodities of the farmers for the big corporate houses. They will form the mandis (agricultural markets), they will get the contract farming done and control the agribusiness. Our basic demand is to scrap all these anti-farm laws and assure the Minimum Support Price (MSP) [the price at which the government buys farm produce] as recommended for all the crops and assured marketing guarantee for all the crops.”

Sukhdev Singh, Punjab general secretary of the Bhartiya Kisan Union Ekta, accused the government of passing the laws “to benefit the big corporates…The government didn’t find it worthy or important taking us onboard before bringing these black laws.” 

Many people may agree that the agriculture sector needs reforms but they say the laws passed by the Indian government leaves farmers at the mercy of private investors. These laws loosen the rules around sale, pricing, storage – laws which had protected Indian farmers from the market for decades. This is what the farmers are worried about, even though the government says something of a minimum support price for produce will remain. Farmers say there will be no more guaranteed assurance of this.

Indian farmers continue anti-farm bills protests | India | Al Jazeera

Having turkey? Four companies process over half of U.S. turkeys.

Having ham? Just three companies control 63% of pork processing

Bread with that? Two companies process half of U.S. wheat.

Wine to go with the meal? The top four winemakers control one-third of the U.S. Market, with E & J Gallo controlling over one quarter of the market alone.

The farmer who raised the turkey or who grew the wheat received only 15 cents of each dollar spent at the store. 

Over the past two decades, farmers’ share of beef sales declined 8 percent, while the cost of ground beef surged 70 percent. 

Instead of reaching farmers, the profits are lining the pockets of the handful of corporations.

The farmers who grow our food are literally going into debt to do so. The 2020 net farm income estimate was negative $1,840 — and this was before the COVID pandemic significantly disrupted corporate supply chains, forcing many farmers to cull animals or plow crops under because of a lack of processing capacity.

10,000 farms are going out of business each year.

The food chain workers, from the farmworkers who pick produce to the workers in slaughterhouses across the country, risk their lives due to the COVID pandemic, forced to continue working despite enormous risk due to fear of losing their jobs, of company retaliation, or due to a lack of paid sick leave.

 The food system has been shaped by corporations’ power and influence and the elected officials who do their bidding.

Build a better future: We need to build a better food and farm system — one that works for all of us.

As We’re Giving Thanks, Let’s Resolve to Change Our Food System for the Better | Common Dreams Views

The seeds of socialism

 Amazon’s war against the unions has once more been exposed.  Internal Amazon reports written in 2019 by Amazon intelligence analysts who work for the Global Security Operations Center, the company’s security division reveal in stark detail the company’s obsessive monitoring of organized labor.

The documents show Amazon analysts closely monitor the labor and union-organizing activity of their workers throughout Europe, as well as environmentalist and social justice groups on Facebook and Instagram. 

They also indicate, and an Amazon spokesperson confirmed, that Amazon has hired Pinkerton well known for its union-busting activities—to spy and gather intelligence on warehouse workers.

The security division’s team members around the world receive updates on labor organizing activities at warehouses that include the exact date, time, location, the source who reported the action, the number of participants at an event (and in some cases a turnout rate of those expected to participate in a labor action), and a description of what happened, such as a “strike” or “the distribution of leaflets.” Other documents reveal that Amazon intelligence analysts keep close tabs on how many warehouse workers attend union meetings; specific worker dissatisfactions with warehouse conditions, such as excessive workloads,

Amazon intelligence analysts gather information on labor organizing and social movements to prevent any disruptions to order fulfillment operations. The new intelligence reports reveal in detail how Amazon uses social media to track environmental activism and social movements in Europe—including Greenpeace and Fridays For Future, environmental activist Greta Thunberg’s global climate strike movement—and perceives such groups as a threat to its operations. 

In 2019, Amazon monitored the Yellow Vests movement, also known as the gilet jaunes, a grassroots uprising for economic justice that spread across France—and solidarity movements in Vienna and protests against state repression in Iran. 

“It’s not enough for Amazon to abuse its dominant market power and face antitrust charges by the EU; now they are exporting 19th century American union-busting tactics to Europe,” Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union, a global federation of trade unions that represents more than 20 million workers, told Motherboard. “This is a company that is ignoring the law, spying on workers, and using every page of the U.S. union-busting playbook to silence workers’ voices.” She continued, “For years people have been comparing Big Tech bosses to 19th century robber barons. And now by using the Pinkertons to do his dirty work, Bezos is making that connection even clearer.”

Secret Amazon Reports Expose Company Spying on Labor, Environmental Groups (vice.com)

 The renown political journalist, John Pilger, has published an article drawing attention to his latest documentary focused upon Britain’s impoverished children and in it he recognises that the key factor is class.

Pilger first reported on child poverty in Britain in 1975.

“…What has changed 45 years later?  At least one member of an impoverished family is likely to have a job — a job that denies them a living wage. Incredibly, although poverty is more disguised, countless British children still go to bed hungry and are ruthlessly denied opportunities..

What has not changed is that poverty is the result of a disease that is still virulent yet rarely spoken about – class.

Study after study shows that the people who suffer and die early from the diseases of poverty brought on by a poor diet, sub-standard housing and the priorities of the political elite and its hostile “welfare” officials — are working people. In 2020, one in three preschool British children suffers like this…”

Pilger points out that:

  “…the Children’s Commissioner has confirmed more than 600,000 children have fallen into poverty since 2012; the total is expected to exceed 5 million. This, few dare say, is a class war on children…”

Pilger concludes his article by saying:

“…the prime minister and his “elite” showed where their priorities lay. In the face of the greatest health crisis in living memory when Britain has the highest Covid-19 death toll in Europe and poverty is accelerating as the result of a punitive “austerity” policy, he announced £16.5 billion for “defence”. This makes Britain, whose military bases cover the world, the highest military spender in Europe. 

And the enemy? The real one is poverty and those who impose it and perpetuate it.”

John Pilger: Britain’s Class War on Children – Consortiumnews

The Autumn issue of Imagine is now online. 

Imagine is the journal of the Socialist Party of Canada.

It has articles on the pandemic, the ‘debt bomb,’ indigenous peoples and the environment, hydro power, the history of radical publishing, alternative communities, Black Loyalists, religion — all interspersed with pictures and poetry.

Over 250 million workers participated in the strike, called by 10 central trade unions and hundreds of worker associations and federations.

Kerala, Puducherry, Odisha, Assam and Telangana witnessed a complete shutdown while normal life was partially affected in several other states as workers struck work and took to the streets, protesting against the “anti-worker” and pro-corporate policies and labour laws as well as the new farm laws brought in by the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata party government.

250 Million Workers And Farmers Strike Nationwide In India | Countercurrents

Elon Musk’s wealth grew over $100 billion since the start of the pandemic, from $24.6 billion on March 18 to $126 billion on November 24, an increase of 413%, boosted by his Tesla stock. His wealth now surpasses Bill Gates of MicrosoftJeff Bezos’s wealth grew almost $70 billion from $113 billion on March 18 to $182.4 billion.Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans, saw his wealth rocket by over $37 billion, from $6.5 billion in March to $43.9 billion on November 24, 2020, an increase of 575 percent.

 Deborah Berger, a product manager at Celotex, told the Grenfell public inquiry that almost three years before the 2017 disaster, colleagues alerted her that a safety test had been rigged with fire-retardant panels to boost the insulation’s fire performance, but the modifications were left out of marketing literature used by architects and specifiers.

She was so alarmed that she noted “WTF?” next to a photograph of the test rig where she saw that fire-resistant magnesium oxide panels had been fitted. 

She said: “I didn’t think Celotex would do that. I thought Celotex was a good company that prided itself on doing the right thing, on being honest. I was really shocked by this. It appeared to me Celotex had taken some materials and installed them to pass the test.”

Berger was the latest witness to give evidence from Celotex. She said what had been done with the test was “like a secret, something we didn’t talk about”, adding: “I wish we had…Things were shared with me about the testing of the product and then when I tried to be honest and open about it and talk to people about it, it didn’t go very far.”

Celotex executive wrote ‘WTF?’ on fire test report, Grenfell inquiry hears | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

 On a planet of rivers, lakes, seas and oceans Water shortages are now affecting more than 3 billion people around the world, as the amount of fresh water available for each person has plunged by a fifth over two decades.

About 1.5 billion people are suffering severe water scarcity or even drought, as a combination of climate breakdown, rising demand and poor management has made agriculture increasingly difficult across swathes of the globe.

 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in areas where severe drought has catastrophic effects on cropland and pastureland once every three years. 

More than a 10th of the world’s rainfed cropland is subject to frequent drought, as is about 14% of the world’s pastureland.

The UN warned on Thursday that billions of people would face hunger and widespread chronic food shortages as a result of failures to conserve water resources, and to tackle the climate crisis.

Qu Dongyu, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said: “We must take very seriously both water scarcity (the imbalance between supply and demand for freshwater resources) and water shortages (reflected in inadequate rainfall patterns) for they are now the reality we all live with … Water shortages and scarcity in agriculture must be addressed immediately and boldly.”

Food production must change in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and try to stave off climate breakdown, but even this is not straightforward, the FAO warned. 

“As the world aims to shift to healthy diets – often composed of relatively water-intensive foods, such as legumes, nuts, poultry and dairy products – the sustainable use of water resources will be ever more crucial,” said Qu, former vice-minister of agriculture and rural affairs in China. “Rainfed agriculture provides the largest share of global food production. However, for it to continue to do so, we must improve how we manage water resources from limited rainfall.”

Rainfed agriculture represents 60% of global crop production, and 80% of land under cultivation, with the rest benefiting from irrigation. However, irrigation is no panacea: more than 60% of irrigated cropland around the world is highly water stressed. 

Irrigation of the wrong type can waste water, depleting non-renewable resources such as underground aquifers, and poor management can result in some farmers losing out on water resources – for instance, in the case of downstream farms, if rivers and waterways are run dry by upstream irrigation. Small-scale and farmer-led irrigation systems are often more efficient than large-scale projects, the report found. Large-scale state-funded schemes in Asia, for instance, have relied on tapping directly into groundwater, putting excessive pressure on that resource. But small-scale farmers around the world face extra difficulties, such as a lack of secure tenure over water rights, and little access to finance and credit.

More than 3 billion people affected by water shortages, data shows | Water | The Guardian

The Covid-19 crisis is on track to cut average pay packets by £1,200 a year by 2025, according to new analysis from the Resolution Foundation.