With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the whole world is discussing the question of war and peace. Europe stands on the verge of the abyss. The danger of a wider war is growing from day to day.

Capitalism has brought upon the people of the world numerous wars, including two disastrous world wars. Wars have caused the people heavy suffering, but have also educated them. More and more people have come to understand that to defend world peace it is imperative to wage struggles against policies of war. Socialists throughout the world are duty-bound to promote the peace sentiments of the people and to stand for world peace. They are duty-bound to expose their deceptions and defeat plans for war. They are duty-bound to educate the people, raise their political consciousness and guide the struggle for world peace in the proper direction.

Total war, with its horrible outrages upon civilians, including children, as distinct from the armies engaged in combat, is not the hellish invention of a few individuals; it is the logical expression of present-day capitalism in military conflicts. ”War,” said Clausewitz, “is a continuation of politics by other means.” And politics, we would add, are a continuation of economic conflict by other means.

War is also an industry. The means of production are now mainly utilised to produce the means of destruction: the wage slaves  employed by their masters in producing and using the implements of war. Capitalism is run for profit. War is embarked on by the capitalist class because it is considered by one capitalist group or another that this course of action is the only course open to them in the circumstances in which they find themselves. They calculate they can retain or obtain what they desire only by war.

Whilst war is in the future is given much consideration by those who live on rent interest and profit; they try to discover ways and means of repaying themselves for the trouble and inconvenience the war has entailed. The plans of the profit band are formulated with the above objects in view. It is well to note that neither in war nor peace does the exploiting class produce; labour applied to the natural resources of the earth brings into being all exchange values; this being the case, the recipients of profit do not give to the cost of the war anything more than they have previously wrung from the working class.

Nationalism and patriotism groups people according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner.

Socialism groups people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. Patriotism in every nation masks class antagonisms to the great profit of the leading class. Working people have no country. The differences which exist between the present countries are all superficial differences. The capitalist regime is the same in all countries. There is only one war which is worthy, that is class war, the social revolution.

To the poor, the propertyless mass of both sexes, falls the lot of loathsome toil in dangerous or unhealthy trades, long hours which make one disgusted with work. To them starvation wages; to them the insecurity of employment, the rigours of the law at the slightest fault, and if illness, old age, or unemployment comes, privations and dark misery with its procession of sorrows and shame. That’s what a country is – a monstrous social inequality, the shameful exploitation of a nation by a privileged class. There is nothing natural nor logical, than that in every country the poverty-stricken, disinherited, the overworked beasts of burden, ill-fed, badly housed, badly clothed, badly educated, march at the first call of the bugle to war.  Is it not possible for humanity to find a different plan for living, one that would give us security and peace? Then may it be that socialism will take its rightful place in the consciousness of the workers.

The only way in which humanity can bring about social change and build a fraternal society, free of war, is to establish socialism. This will not come about as an expression of non-violence but as the conscious act of a socialist working-class. The attitude of pacifism can be, and has been, adopted by people of all manner of opinions—for example, by members of the British Labour Party, by Christians and so on—all of whom support the capitalist social system which produces violence and which therefore makes pacifism an empty dream. Any organisation which accepts the continuance of capitalism, the cause of war in the modem world, is standing in the way of political parties like the Socialist Party, which seek to end capitalism and with it war.

 The World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference ended Friday with an agreement on patent rights that campaigners said would do virtually nothing to address vast global inequities in coronavirus vaccine and treatment access, a failure they attributed to relentless obstruction by rich countries and the pharmaceutical industry. To date, just 18% of people in low-income countries have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose.

Dr. Christos Christou, international president of Doctors Without Borders, added that while “a few changes were made” to an earlier draft text that advocates panned, the final agreement “fails overall to offer an effective and meaningful solution to help increase people’s access to needed medical tools during the pandemic as it does not adequately waive intellectual property on all essential Covid-19 medical tools, and it does not apply to all countries.”

“The measures outlined in the decision,” Christou added, “will not address pharmaceutical monopolies or ensure affordable access to lifesaving medical tools and will set a negative precedent for future global health crises and pandemics.”

 One conference attendee, Anna Marriott of Oxfam International, said she heard that some national delegations did not even get a chance to see the text before it was adopted by the WTO. 

After marathon negotiations, the narrow deal clarifies governments’ ability to use compulsory licensing to ramp up vaccine production without the consent of patent-holding pharmaceutical companies. The agreement also temporarily eases restrictions on the export of vaccines produced under compulsory licenses.

“The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful,” said Max Lawson, co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “The E.U. has blocked anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver. The U.K. and Switzerland have used negotiations to twist the knife and make any text even worse. And the U.S. has sat silently in negotiations with red lines designed to limit the impact of any agreement.”

“This so-called compromise largely reiterates developing countries’ existing rights to override patents in certain circumstances,” Lawson added. “And it tries to restrict even that limited right to countries which do not already have capacity to produce Covid-19 vaccines. Put simply, it is a technocratic fudge aimed at saving reputations, not lives.”

The coronavirus has killed an estimated 30,000 people each day on average since India and South Africa unveiled their proposal in October 2020. The two nations’ waiver plan was backed by more than 100 WTO member countries, but rich governments derailed every attempted advancement of the text, offering alternatives that would leave in place—and even bolster—intellectual property restrictions that have hindered vaccine production throughout the pandemic. The pharmaceutical industry, which has raked in huge profits throughout the deadly pandemic, also lobbied aggressively against India and South Africa’s proposed waiver.

“Once again, the shameful, undemocratic WTO process allowed rich countries representing corporate interests to strongarm a sham agreement that bears no resemblance to the original waiver proposal and will do nothing to help save lives for this or future pandemics,” said Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at Public Citizen.

WTO Deal on Vaccine Patents Decried as a ‘Sham’ Dictated by Rich Nations, Big Pharma (commondreams.org)

 Healthcare debt is “far more pervasive” in the United States than previously known, currently impacting 41% of U.S. adults and more than 100 million people across the country, according to a joint study by Kaiser Health News and NPR.

Previous attempts to assess the extent of the medical debt crisis have understated the problem because “much of the debt that patients accrue is hidden as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans to hospitals and other medical providers.”

The investigation found. “A quarter of adults with healthcare debt owe more than $5,000. And about one in five with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off.”

Dr. Rishi Manchanda, the CEO of Health Begins, explained that, “We have a health care system almost perfectly designed to create debt.”

“Now, a highly lucrative industry is capitalizing on patients’ inability to pay,” KHN reported.

 “Hospitals and other medical providers are pushing millions into credit cards and other loans. These stick patients with high interest rates while generating profits for the lenders that top 29%…Patient debt is also sustaining a shadowy collections business fed by hospitals―including public university systems and nonprofits granted tax breaks to serve their communities―that sell debt in private deals to collections companies that, in turn, pursue patients,” the outlet noted.

“It’s barbaric,” lamented Dr. Miriam Atkins, a Georgia oncologist who told KHN that she has had patients stop their treatment due to fear of racking up massive debt.

‘Barbaric’ System Saddles Over 100 Million in US With Healthcare Debt (commondreams.org)

A general election was held in the province of Ontario on June 2. Four main parties participated: the Progressive Conservatives (PCs), the Liberals, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Greens. The PCs won again. 

A single person in Ontario with a disability and no children is able to collect a yearly income of $15,731, according to the latest report by the Maytree Foundation, which studies welfare rates across Canada. This is $9,000 below Canada’s official poverty line, at which household disposable income is 75% of the Market Basket Measure. Chris Glover, Ontario legislator for the NDP, hit the nail on the head when he said: ”It’s not poverty, it’s destitution.” The NDP, the Greens and the Liberals all said they would increase Ontario Disability Support Program benefits if elected. The Progressive Conservatives did not promise an increase in benefits. But whoever had won and whatever increases are or are not made, life will still be hard for the working class, disabled or not. 

The world bee population is dying out; between April 2020 and April 2021, 45.5% of bees died in the US. Its normal to lose 5-10% during a winter as fewer eggs are laid. In a particularly bad winter you could lose up to 15-25%, but above 25% you’ve got problems. One third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees. There are companies that rent bees out to farmers who need them, but even they are running low on them. The reasons for the decline in bee population are pesticides, habitat destruction, drought, air pollution and global warming; in other words, the effects of capitalism. 

Cost of living

Most workers in Canada are struggling thanks to the rising cost of food, gas and other consumer goods. Average prices rose by 6.7% last month, while average wages fell by 1.6%. The Canadian economy has experienced high inflation before – in the 1970’s and 1980’s, for example. But in those days many unions had Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) in their contracts. By 1980 half of all union members had a COLA clause in their contracts. Over the last 40 years the capitalist class has battled against workers’ rights, state support programs and trade union freedoms. For most unions, struggling just to survive, COLA seemed the least of their problems. By 2014 the proportion of union members protected by COLA had fallen to 1%. Now, in their absence, unions throughout Canada are fighting for significant wage hikes, even striking, to force capitalists to raise wages above inflation. Under capitalism it never gets easier for the working class. 

The Toronto Star recently initiated an investigation into food banks in Toronto and found that many of them are running out of supplies. Their article of April 29 showed that the Fort York Food Bank ran out after only being open for three hours and serving 95 people. Toronto’s high housing costs and the end of pandemic support programs have led to an increase in people relying on food banks. This has been exacerbated by the recent increase in prices for food and gas. In March 2019, 60,000 clients visited food banks across Canada. In March 2022, the corresponding figure was 160,000. That month 5,700 used a food bank for the first time. Many of them had a university education. So much for the idea that the more education you have the better off you’ll be. What a joke — we live under capitalism. 

Over the last two years Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, has seen the proportion of its population that is homeless grow to twice that of Toronto and five times that of Vancouver. The provincial government has bought three hotels to shelter more than 300 people and found 430 more spaces for them at a cost of $130 million. The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that homeless deaths have increased due to the supply of toxic drugs. Fentanyl is now laced into more than 80% of street drugs. On every stage of the journey from cartel to user, sellers cut heroin and cocaine with fentanyl to make it cheaper and more profitable. So whether profits are made legally or not, they remain what they have always been — the death blood of capitalism. 

On May 16, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business revealed that business bankruptcies in Canada in the first quarter of 2022 were up 34% on the first quarter of 2021 and returning to pre-pandemic levels. There were 807 bankruptcies this quarter. This is not an accurate figure because many businesses just close their doors without filing for bankruptcy. This is due to inflation, rising interest rates and the end of government subsidies they had during the pandemic. Yet still so many say: “If you’ve got what it takes, you will make a fortune!’. Try telling that to those bankrupt capitalists. As far as bankruptcy goes, the whole capitalist system is morally bankrupt. 

TV debate

The leaders of the four main parties contesting June’s Ontario election participated in a heated TV debate on May 16. Most of the talk was criticism of each other’s policies rather than presentation of what they would do if elected. PC Premier Doug Ford said that the other three parties wanted to bring back license plate stickers and raise the gas tax and taxes in general. He told the NDP’s Andrea Horwath that some private sector unions has given their support to the PC. Horwath proposed a tax freeze on folks making up to $200,000 a year. “Everybody should be able to afford everyday life,” she said. Liberal leader Steve Del Duca accused the PCs of planning to build a new highway just to make their donors wealthier. The Greens’ Mike Shreiner criticized all three of the other parties for not being concerned about the environment. In pugilistic terms he won on points. 

To sum up, all four said in effect: ”I can do a better job of running capitalism than those other three jerks.” And that is why nobody should vote for any of them. 

Charlie-boy and Camilla came to Canada in May for a three-day public-relations tour to deodorize the stink that has enveloped the royal family recently. The bad odour is due to resentment of Britain’s colonial past and the royals’ shameful present. A poll conducted in April showed that a mere 26% thought that the Queen should remain as Canada’s head of state. It’s encouraging to see that so many view the monarchy as irrelevant, but it would be even better if they thought the same about capitalism.

War in Ukraine

Those who thought that Russia would no longer be a threat to world peace have had a rude awakening. Under capitalism there is never worldwide peace – small wars are always being fought somewhere — but now we have one which could escalate into a major war. The capitalist classes of different countries have two fundamental needs that put them on to a collision course with one another — access to raw materials and access to markets, hence war. Once a war is being fought other factors come into play, such as protecting trade routes, capturing and protecting strategic positions, and profits for companies with government contracts, particularly arms manufacturers. The capitalist class in Russia wish to extend their sphere of influence and the Western capitalists view this as a threat. In Ukraine Putin and his fellow thieves want an outlet for their shipping on the Black Sea and the industrial area of eastern Ukraine. 

The Socialist Party of Canada and its companion parties in other lands have always held that the world’s working class have no stake in any war. It doesn’t matter to a Ukrainian worker whether he/she is exploited by a Russian capitalist or a Ukrainian one. Exploitation is exploitation. Workers fight for their bosses because they are lied to. They are told to fight for freedom, democracy and so forth, although they really fight for the bosses’ profits. This is why we in the World Socialist Movement say: “This war does not justify the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood.” In a socialist world, there will be no wars. 

Source: The Socialist Party of Canada. Secretary’s Report for June 2022 

News from Canada – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

 A Short Story from the April 2004 issue of the World Socialist newsletter

How much money would it take to bribe you to help kill 212,000 Americans in a single year?

What size incentive would cause you to assist in the theft of $543.6 billion? 

Last year over 500,000 families were destroyed by bankruptcies caused by a family member getting sick

Bernie Sanders and Senator Lindsey Graham had a debate on Fox Nation. Sanders asked:

“In the United States, Lindsey, we spend twice as much per capita on health care compared to the people of any other country, while major countries like Canada, the U.K., Germany manage to supply health care to all their people. Why is that?”

The simple answer is the same reason we have an ongoing climate crisis – the legal bribery of politicians. These are real numbers. The bribery is real, the deaths are real. The bribes are so extensive, so widespread, so lavish that President Biden hasn’t yet even seriously brought up the topic of Medicare For All or something like it.

 The amount spent just last year bribing Congress to keep our healthcare system in place was $689,466,798.00. Almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.

In exchange, the health insurance industry took home $19 billion in profits last year, hospitals took home over $70 billion in profits, and the pharmaceutical industry made similarly huge profits last year: at least $100 billion. These three industries—that have a stake in keeping our healthcare system as broken and dysfunctional as possible—had handed out billions in compensation to their senior executives and board members. Not to mention stockholder dividends.

Health insurance in other nations is a marginal business around the edges used almost exclusively by the very wealthy to get private air ambulances and luxury suites in hospitals.

Drugs cost as little as a tenth of what they do here, and everybody in the other developed nations has health coverage.

A new peer-reviewed study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lays out a damning picture of the damage caused by the roughly $700 million a year the healthcare industry uses to bribe American legislators.

“We estimated,” the study’s authors say in the study’s abstract, “that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved about 212,000 lives in 2020 alone.

“We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a single-payer universal healthcare system over the course of the pandemic.

“These economic benefits are in addition to US$438 billion expected to be saved by single-payer universal healthcare during a non-pandemic year.”

Opinion | How Many Billions in Profit Is It Worth to Kill 212,000 Americans a Year? | Thom Hartmann (commondreams.org)

“A founding economic principle that everyone is motivated by ‘unlimited wants’, stuck on a consumerist treadmill and striving to accumulate as much wealth as they can, is untrue,” a study published in Nature Sustainability said. “The belief in this principle has also had dire consequences for the health of the planet. Striving to continually increase individual wealth, and pursuing unending economic growth, has come at a heavy cost. As wealth has increased, so too has resource use and pollution.”

Dr Paul Bain, the lead researcher and a reader at the department of psychology at the University of Bath, said that while the figures in the typical responses sound like a lot of money, “when considered that they represent a person’s ideal wealth across their whole life they are relatively moderate”.

“The ideology of unlimited wants, when portrayed as human nature, can create social pressure for people to buy more than they actually want,” he said. “Discovering that most people’s ideal lives are actually quite moderate could make it socially easier for people to behave in ways that are more aligned with what makes them genuinely happy and to support stronger policies to help safeguard the planet.”

Dr Renata Bongiorno, a co-author of the report and social psychologist at Bath Spa University and the University of Exeter, said: “The findings are a stark reminder that the majority view is not necessarily reflected in policies that allow the accumulation of excessive amounts of wealth by a small number of individuals…”

Government figures show the richest 1% of households in the UK each have at least £3.6m. At the other end of the scale, the poorest 10% of households have £15,400 or less, with almost half burdened with more debts than they have in assets, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics.

How much money is needed for ideal life? Most are OK with £8m, study finds | Psychology | The Guardian

At their height in the mid-20th century, one in three workers was a union member, and today, scarcely one in 10 is. All of the downstream damages to the working class — lower relative wages, higher economic inequality, less political power — flow from this decline. 

Liz Shuler, the newly elected president of the AFL-CIO, announced from the convention stage of the formation of the ​“Center for Transformational Organizing,” with the stated goal of organizing at least 1 million new working people in the next 10 years.

Let’s do a little quick math. 

One decade ago, in 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says there were 14.8 million union members in America, for a union density of 11.8%. In 2021, the most recent year on record, there were 14 million union members, for a density of 10.3%. In raw numbers, 800,000 union members were lost in the past decade. So adding a cool million in the next decade seems pretty good. Right? 

No. According to the BLS, America will add 12 million jobs during the 2020s decade, with total employment rising to 165.4 million by the year 2030. One million is only 8% of those. If we very conservatively estimate there will be 166 million total workers by 2032, and we add a million new union members, there would be 15 million union members a decade from now, for a union density of less than 10%. Which is to say: The AFL-CIO’s highly touted organizing plan would represent a continued decline of unions for the next decade, and an acceptance of single-digit union density, which is the last stop before true irrelevance. Rather than ​“unprecedented union growth,” as advertised, this would represent extremely well-precedented degrowth.

 Liz Shuler about explained  this projection. ​“It’s a target, it’s a threshold, that we could get every union in the federation to buy into, which is a feat in and of itself,” Shuler said. ​“The federation has never been seen as the place that does the organizing, it’s the unions themselves. And so if the federation sets a goal, it’s a hollow goal, if you don’t have the unions behind you 100%.” 

high-profileIt is good that they are trying, at long last, to feature new organizing as a high profile priority, and it is good that they are trying to set a goal but the plain facts are that the nation’s largest body of organized labor has announced a goal that represents a decline in the single most important measure of union strength.

Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the AFL-CIO’s largest union, took the view that, ​“It’s important to put a number out there,” she said. ​“Is it too low? Of course it’s too low!” 

Her point was that the decline of unions has been more than a half-century in the making, and any reversal of that would take a long time, and the mere act of having a goal that all of these dozens of disparate unions would agree to was a worthy first step. 

The problem is that the goal is unaspiring and it won’t do much good if achieved.

The AFL-CIO’s Official New Goal: Continued Decline – In These Times

For the first time, researchers have calculated exactly how many people the US could save by acting on the climate crisis. 

A total of 7.4 million lives around the world will be saved over this century if the US manages to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050, according to the analysis. Just 10 US states could save 3.7 million lives worldwide by cutting their emissions to net zero, largely due to their high consumption of fossil fuels. Texas alone could save 1.1 million lives. But even action in less populous states would have a benefit: Idaho is capable of saving about 68,000 lives, Kansas could save 126,000 lives and Hawaii could save about 16,000 lives.

With a net zero America would enable to save the world $3.7tn in costs to adapt to the rising heat. 

The USA has yet to pass any meaningful legislation to tackle the climate crisis. Failure to pass any legislation would leave the USA, and the world, far short in the effort to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. As the world’s second-largest polluter of greenhouse gases, the USA  will in large part decide how many people in faraway countries will be subjected to deadly heat, as well as endure punishing storms, floods, drought and other consequences of the climate emergency.  Rising heat this century will cause an uneven distribution of deaths around the world, mainly focused on areas such as north and west Africa, as well as south Asia. India and Pakistan recently endured a brutal heatwave of temperatures reaching 122F (50C) in some places, which killed several hundred people and was made 30 times more likely by the climate crisis.

“Each additional ton of carbon has these global impacts – there is a tangible difference in terms of death rates,” said Hannah Hess, associate director at the research group Rhodium, which is part of the Climate Impact Lab consortium that conducted the study. “There’s a sense of frustration over the lack of progress at the national level on climate but every action at state or local level makes a difference in terms of lives.”

“People have different abilities to adapt depending on the resources they have to protect themselves from extreme heat,” said Hess. “The hottest places don’t all face equally elevated risk of death; it’s closely tied to economic growth. Within the US there are impacts in places like southern California and Texas, but the US is really eclipsed by poorer regions of the world when it comes to these sort of deaths.”

How millions of lives can be saved if the US acts now on climate | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 The Hawaii islands were once a thriving food forest until colonial settlers in the 18th and 19th century stole the land, water and labor to create industrial monocrop plantations – mostly sugar and pineapples for export. This depleted the soil of its nutrients, carbon and water, and the Maui people of food and climate security. Between 85% and 90% of the food eaten in Maui now comes from imports while diet related diseases are soaring, and the state allocates less than 1% of its budget to agriculture.

Maui is one of the largest islands in Hawaii, a Polynesian archipelago and one of the most remote populated land masses on the planet. It’s a subtropical biodiversity hotspot, where flora and fauna adapted over millennia to a wide range of ecosystems and microclimates, but ecological destruction over the past century or so has also made it the extinction capital of the world.

Rain clouds cover the peaks of the West Maui mountains, one of the wettest places on the planet, which for centuries sustained biodiverse forests providing abundant food and medicines for Hawaiians who took only what they needed. Those days of abundance and food sovereignty are long gone.

Rows of limp lemon trees struggle in windswept sandy slopes depleted by decades of sugarcane cultivation. Agricultural runoff choking the ocean reef and water shortages, linked to over-tourism and global heating, threaten the future viability of this paradise island.

At its heart, the traditional Hawaiian farming vision is about creating a sustainable relationship between community and agriculture by reestablishing the connection between culture and land. It isn’t just about looking back, but rather mixing ancient regenerative farming practices with modern tools and technologies to meet the climate and food challenges facing Hawaii in the 21st century. The forest is considered akin to an extended family, somewhat unwieldy and unpredictable but resilient and stronger together than apart. The lofty flowering acacia and myrtaceae trees are natural born givers, capturing fog and rain to distribute moisture outwards like a lawn sprinkler and down through the roots to recharge aquifers. While the groundcover plants such as mosses and ferns act like a living mulch and create a healthy ecosystem for all sorts of useful microorganisms.

“We believe that land is the chief, the people its servants,” said Kaipo Kekona, 38, who with his wife Rachel Lehualani Kapu have transformed several acres of depleted farmland into a dense food forest on a mountain ridge. The couple are Indigenous farmers – ancient knowledge keepers – and part of a wider food and land sovereignty movement gaining momentum in Hawaii.

Traditional Hawaiian farmers have to contend not only with historic drought, erratic rainfall and deadly natural pathogens but also the dominance of industrial agriculture and foreign capital in Hawaii. The state became the biotech GMO capital of the US after agrochemical transnationals were welcomed to open research fields with fewer restrictions on potentially toxic pesticides. In Kekona and Kapu’s food forest in Maui there are no pesticides or synthetic fertilisers. Cover crops and tilling are also out.“ Traditional farming is about facilitating natural processes in order to feed the soil so that the land can feed us,” said Kekona. Indigenous farming practices in Hawaii are guided by the lunar cycle and wind patterns, knowledge which was also passed down orally over generations. The 30 moon phases used in the traditional Hawaiian calendar dictate when to plant, weed, water and harvest. “The goal is to knock the empire down and replace those corporate ag guys with something more environmentally sustainable which reflects our values,” said Kekona, who is part of the Indigenous sovereignty movement reconnecting Hawaiians with their lands and traditions.

A canopy system is central to a food forest. On Kekona’s farm, sugar cane, papaya, coconuts, mangoes, coffee and candle nut trees provide shade and absorb water, nutrients and leaf litter, while mosses and ferns help suppress weeds and distract insects. In between are the cash crops such as the starchy root vegetable kalo (taro) – a traditional Hawaiian staple revered as an ancestor – sweet potatoes, breadfruit, turmeric and peppers, while other nutrient-rich crops are mostly used for mulching or fertiliser.

Unlike industrial agriculture, diversity is key: there are nine varieties of avocado and coconuts, three native bananas, six sweet potatoes and 27 types of kalo in orange, purple and brown. Some are coveted for the starchy sweet roots used for porridge, others produce tastier leaves and stems for stews, and one variety smells and tastes just like popcorn. Drought tolerant varieties are becoming increasingly important. Non-native species such as passionfruit, lemongrass, papaya, perennial peanuts and coffee are cultivated to enrich the soil with nutrients such as nitrogen, provide shade or wind cover or just because they taste good.

“It’s a constant cycle, everything existing together at the same time, with crops always feeding the soil and nurturing each other,” said Kekona. “This is the essence of the forest food system, which our ancestors passed down to us over centuries.”

At Hōkūnui farm in the central valley, 37-year-old Koa Hewahewa and his family of foresters mix generational Indigenous knowledge and modern technologies to repair the damage caused by intensive cattle ranching and decades of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers.

“Letting a chemical company pollute the island to feed the world while we suffer food insecurity is beyond ironic,” said Autumn Ness, the Hawaii program director of Beyond Pesticides and co-founder of the Maui Hub, the island’s first farm box scheme which connects small farmers and producers to residents. “What’s stopping Hawaii feeding its own people is not lack of knowledge or skills, it’s the power structure, the ongoing plantation mentality which tips the scales in favour of big ag and developers while rubbishing traditional knowledge. We need to change this narrative because, without radical changes, what will be left of this place in a hundred years?”

The farmers restoring Hawaii’s ancient food forests that once fed an island | Hawaii | The Guardian