Food Nationalism

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Some countries are hoarding food items to ensure supplies for their population as the virus crisis deepens. The export curbs could prove especially harmful for poorer nations that survive on imports.



The export curbs take place against the backdrop of panic buying that has left supermarkets with aisles of empty shelves. The scarcity is not due to a shortage of supplies but to logistical hurdles created by measures to contain the pandemic.



Experts fear restrictions on the exports of wheat and wheat flour could lead to higher prices of essential items such as bread, proving lethal for many of the poorer countries in Africa that rely on imported food. High bread prices are known to have sparked riots and caused political instability, especially in Africa.



“Since most poor countries, many of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, are net food importers, sudden price hikes will almost inevitably raise poverty and hunger, because these countries have very limited capacities to respond to shortages and price rises e.g. by drawing down buffer stocks,” Rainer Thiele of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy told DW.
Russia



The world’s biggest wheat exporter wants to limit grain exports to protect domestic supplies as the fast spreading coronavirus pandemic disrupts supply chains globally. The Russian Agriculture Ministry has proposed to limit the exports of some grains, including wheat, to 7 million tons for April-June. 
Ukraine



In Russia’s neighbor, Ukraine, a major exporter of grain and vegetable oils, the government is monitoring wheat exports daily and has said it would take appropriate measures, if required. The government in Kyiv has been facing demands from bakers and millers to curb grain exports and prevent bread prices from soaring if the coronavirus crisis worsens.
Kazakhstan 



Kazakhstan has banned exports of wheat flour, buckwheat, sugar, sunflower oil and some vegetables, including carrots and potatoes, until at least April 15 as it seeks to build stockpiles to deal with the coronavirus emergency. The Central Asian country, one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat flour, is a crucial supplier to nations such as Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The ban on wheat flour could affect bread companies around the world.



Vietnam



The Southeast Asian country, which has so far succeeded in limiting the spread of the coronavirus, last week temporarily suspended new rice export contracts. The world’s third-largest rice exporter said it was ascertaining if it had sufficient domestic supplies to cope with the pandemic. The Philippines, China and countries in Africa are among the biggest buyers of Vietnam’s rice.
Serbia



The East European country has banned the export of sunflower oil and other goods as a precautionary move.



COVID-19 Will Widen the Racial Divide

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In biological terms, pandemics are a leveller, attacking prince, prime minister and pauper without favour. In economic terms, they are much more hierarchical. 



 In the United States COVID-19 is likely to widen the country’s alarming racial wealth and income gap.  Black Americans are on average much poorer than whites, a divide that has widened in recent years. They more commonly occupy insecure jobs at risk from the forced shutdowns, and have less financial flexibility. A Fed study found almost 30% of college-educated black households couldn’t pay all their bills if confronted with an unexpected $400 expense – a proportion that doubles where the household lacks a bachelor’s degree. People tend to believe it has got much better in the past 50 years. It hasn’t. 



 While the wealth gap is large, it’s income that counts most during a public health crisis.  White households make roughly double the income of black households, a reality that hasn’t improved since 1962. 

That’s aside from the direct health risk. The same people often do jobs that cannot be performed from home and pose serious risk of infection such as retail, home help and nursing, according to the Center for American Progress. Moreover, if they get sick, the 16 states that are home to 65% of black Americans rank well below average on healthcare access, according to consultancy McKinsey. Death rates among African Americans are already higher than average for heart disease, asthma, cancer and pneumonia. 



Covid-19 could therefore leave black Americans a disproportionate legacy of death as well as financial disarray.



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-breakingviews/breakingviews-racial-wealth-gap-weakens-u-s-virus-defenses-idUSKBN21H384

America’s Farm Workers and COVID-19

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America’s farmworkers have always done the essential work of feeding the nation for little reward and with few codified protections or benefits. Researchers and advocates estimate between 60% and 75% of California’s more than 400,000 agricultural workers are undocumented. The United Farm Workers of America estimates only about 10,000 are unionized. An additional 20,000 are in California on H2A visas, a visa category that has seen some processing delays amid coronavirus shutdown orders. With the more farming-intensive spring season about to set in, and a surge in Covid-19 cases expected state-wide, there’s a small and rapidly closing window to establish meaningful safety measures in the fields.



In California, which grows two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts and one-third of its vegetables, the pressure to shift and bolster that fast-changing food system is felt acutely. The state’s roughly 400,000 agricultural workers are exempt from shelter-in-place orders, and vital agriculture work is continuing to keep markets stocked nationwide. Growers and labor contractors say they are putting new practices and measures in place to keep workers socially distanced and maintain sanitized common facilities.



But workers and their advocates tell a different story: of vulnerable, low-wage workers operating in fear, without proper protections let alone information about the risks involved in their essential labor, and without hope of any share in expanded unemployment benefits should they fall ill or lose work.
“Nothing has changed at work,” Amadeo Sumano said . “The distance principle, 6 feet between people, does not work in agriculture.” He worries about getting sick, or having his hours cut as some growers contend with a loss in food service orders, and the financial pressure that would come with either scenario, made even more intense because of his undocumented status. “I have lived and worked in this country for many years and paid taxes, but cannot access benefits,” said Sumano. “If either working hours are cut or we contract the virus, we are likely to not be able to pay rent and would become homeless.”
Armando Elenes, secretary-treasurer of the United Farm Workers of America. “The last hands that touched that produce before the consumer puts it in their mouth is a farmworker’s hands, so we better care about what happens to these workers.” He laughed at the notion of growers voluntarily offering hazard pay to compensate for their new risks, as some front line workers in other sectors have demanded. “The ‘essential’ part doesn’t show up on their paycheck. They’re lucky to get minimum wage,” he said.



“They’re getting paid the same, yet they’re exposing themselves to more dangers,” said Irene de Barraicua, spokesperson for Lideres Campesinas, an advocacy organization of and for California female farmworkers. “There is no standard for safety orientation. Sometimes we’re hearing they just get a five-minute talk – stay six feet apart, don’t do this, don’t do that – but they’re working in big crowds. It feels like it’s not being taken seriously because the money is more important.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/us-coronavirus-outbreak-california-farm-workers

The Workers Kick Back

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More than 100 Amazon workers walked out of a New York City facility on Monday, going on strike and demanding increased protective gear and hazard pay as they work through the coronavirus pandemic.



“Since the building won’t close by itself, we’re going to have to force their hand,” Chris Smalls, lead organizer of the Staten Island strike, told CNBC. He added that workers “will not return until the building gets sanitized”. 
Small alleged that Amazon employees have been exposed to multiple people who have been found to have Covid-19. Employees at the New York facility accuse Amazon of poor communication about worker health. Small himself is in quarantine after coming in contact with an infected co-worker.
The management assistant alleges only “a select few of the general managers” and a handful of colleagues in close proximity were informed about the diagnosis. Another anonymous worker told CNBC gloves were being rationed.



The strikers demanded the company close down the large warehouse for thorough cleaning after reports of multiple employees testing positive for the coronavirus. Workers had already tested positive for the coronavirus at 11 warehouses. One warehouse in Kentucky was forced to close temporarily.

Delivery workers for Instacart, a national delivery service also went on strike across the country on Monday, demanding disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer and better pay to offset risks faced in bringing groceries to Americans confined to their homes. 



Instacart announced concessions to its delivery workers including new health and safety supplies and automatic tipping. In a Medium post, Instacart workers and the Gig Workers Collective said the company’s response was “insulting for a number of reasons”.



“We are heartened by the outpouring of support we’ve received from Instacart customers, politicians, activists and everyday folks worried that they could be exposed to the virus due to Instacart’s craven profit-seeking,” the workers wrote. “It goes to show that corporate greed is an issue that impacts us all, whether one is a shopper directly being affected, or not.”

Some Whole Foods workers are also expected to strike



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/30/amazon-workers-strike-coronavirus

The Peoples Wake-Up Call

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The COVID-19 pandemic focuses attention on the disastrous deficiencies of the profit system. For far too long, we have ignored the failures of a system that reduces ever more people to homelessness, refugee camps, permanent indebtedness, and servitude. It is an economic system which directly imperils our survival and well-being. It is system devoted to generating profits for the richest. It values things only for its market price. It promotes maximising personal financial returns as the highest moral obligation to society. It wantonly destroys the stability of its climate and the purity of its air, water, and soil. Military expenditures and preparations for wars represents wasted resources that would be better applied to addressing the deficiencies in our healthcare. 



 Rich people are far more likely to survive Coronavirus than poor people. Wealthy people the world over are more likely to have access to testing, treatment, good doctors, ventilators, etc. Poor people all over the planet are more likely to try to “tough it out” at home because they don’t have a doctor or can’t afford one. A humane society doesn’t trade some lives for others. It is, perhaps, possible within capitalism to put a dollar sign on every death as part of a cost-benefit analysis. But a humane society doesn’t frame addressing the public’s health and the health of the economy as a “trade-off.” There’s never an excuse to send people to work in dangerous conditions with no safety nets and benefits. It’s especially horrendous in the midst of coronavirus.

 

 The COVID-19 pandemic has been made worse and continues to be made worse by nationalism, ironic considering the virus doesn’t care about borders. This pandemic shows us it’s time to evolve past the idea of the nation-state. It has shown us not just the flaws in the capitalist system, but it has also demonstrated for all to see our shared humanity. We must join together. What if we decided there were no nations but instead the working people of the world were one. Coronavirus has made so clear that global issues can’t be easily categorized as just a health issue. It has encompass our economy and encompassed our entire social system and ways of life. Covid-19 has shined a spotlight on the ways that our society is not working, particularly not working for people in vulnerable groups.



Capitalism is a self-destructive system that no longer can support our long-term future. When the pandemic dissipates business as usual is simply not an option. Once the global turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic has eventually subsided (as it certainly will in due course), our biggest and most important challenge will be if we have learned from the experience to re-shape our future. It has awaken to the stark reality of the profound failure of our existing institutions. But it has also awaken to the truth of other possibilities and our interconnections with one another and with our planet. We must now learn to devote ourselves to the well-being of all in an interdependent world. The coronavirus pandemic has been a powerful reminder that a society committed to the common good is essential. Let us move forward to create a better world for all. Let us free our minds. World socialism is all about you and me, and our neighbours, and our friends and co-workers, and our shared humanity. The antidote to COVID-19 is to build a solidarity-based economy with one another. A real sharing economy could emerge at the other end of the coronavirus crisis.



Protect the already vulnerable

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Hundreds of thousands of disabled and chronically ill people face poverty after being left out of emergency measures to bolster the benefits system to help claimants cope with the coronavirus crisis, 100 disability charities have warned.



The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) said in an open letter that changes introduced last week to raise the weekly rate of universal credit by £20 would not apply to those on legacy benefits.
Ella Abraham, the DBC’s campaigns co-chair, said: “These are unprecedented and extremely worrying times for so many people, across all of our organisations we are seeing the detrimental impact this is having on disabled and unwell people’s physical and mental health.



Many claimants will not receive the increase, worth more than £1,000 a year, because they receive employment and support allowance (ESA), a disability unemployment benefit that pre-dates universal credit.
The DBC warns that disabled people claiming tax credits who lose their jobs over the next few months will be worse off because they will not qualify for income protections promised when universal credit was introduced.
Transitional protection is a temporary top-up payment added to universal credit to offset any benefit losses when claimants are transferred from tax credits – but it is not payable when claimants move because of a change of circumstances, such as job loss.
“Disabled people in work and parents of disabled children stand to lose far more than most people if they lose transitional protection – sometimes amounting to thousands of pounds a year. This will make it even more difficult for them to recover from the economic shock of the next few months,” the letter says.

The charities have called for measures to protect vulnerable claimants from sudden falls in income, including a definitive commitment from ministers not to apply benefit sanctions, and a repayment holiday on advance loans from the Department for Work and Pensions to see new claimants through the five-week wait for a first universal credit payment. It also calls on ministers to protect the incomes of disabled people whose benefits are automatically reduced or suspended when they start an appeal against a benefit decision. About 90,000 people are currently awaiting an appeal.



https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/30/benefit-changes-leave-disabled-people-facing-poverty-uk-charities-warn-coronavirus

Housing the homeless

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After the unfunded request from the government last week, which also called for the closure of night shelters and street encampments, homelessness charities questioned whether fulfilling it would be feasible. But on Monday, charities were keen to stress that considerable progress had been made in a short space of time, with the national homelessness charity Crisis estimating that about 4,200 had been rehoused in England within a few weeks. Crisis estimates that there are thousands more people still in night shelters, lying next to each other on church hall floors or still living in hostels where they have to access shared space to cook or wash.



“It shows what you can do with money and organisation and an assertive approach from government,” Matthew Downie, director of policy at Crisis said. “There shouldn’t be too much self-congratulation about this. There are people still on the streets, and many people who won’t have eaten for days,” said Downie. “But we should recognise that it has taken a global pandemic to sort out an absolutely solvable problem; it is possible to get thousands of people off the streets and out of night shelters in the space of a week. The real test isn’t how quickly we get people off the streets, but how permanently we can keep them off afterwards,” Downie said.



 Officials are concerned about the risk of transmission between people living on the streets, congregating in day shelters, and also about those who live in shelters with communal sleeping, eating and washing areas.Birmingham city council had worked with a Holiday Inn in the centre of the city to accommodate more than 250 rough sleepers or residents of night shelters, he said, and hotel staff and charity workers were bringing people three meals a day to their rooms to allow them to isolate. Liverpool council has paid for more than 50 people to move into a newly built, unopened hotel.



Meanwhile, charities dealing primarily with people who have an uncertain immigration status said they were worried that not enough support was being offered. People who have a “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) status – which is given to some asylum seekers, or people who have a limited immigration status – are not normally eligible for support from homelessness charities that rely on government funding. The question of how rehousing these people can be funded remains unresolved.



“It’s clear that NRPF conditions from the Home Office are prohibiting local authorities from supporting an extremely vulnerable groups of people,” a spokesperson for Naccom, a charity helping destitute migrants, said.



The Glass Door Homeless Charity said it had been contacted by many people who still needed urgent rehousing. “We have had one case of someone sleeping rough who has been told they must reconnect to their home country rather than being offered accommodation,” Neil Parkinson, a senior caseworker, said.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/thousands-of-rough-sleepers-still-unhoused-in-england-say-charities

COVID-19 and the Dictators

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Boris Johnson’s coronavirus bill, which gives sweeping new powers to ministers, was passed last week with the proviso that MPs would vote every six months on whether it should be renewed. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s more wide-ranging and draconian emergency measures have a lifespan of two months.

The situation is different in Hungary. The Hungarian parliament is expected to rubber-stamp the “protecting against the coronavirus” law, ushering in an indefinite period of what amounts to one-man rule in an EU member state.



The new law allows Victor Orbán to rule by decree, alone and unchallenged. The prime minister will be able to override all existing legislation. Elections will not take place. Information on government actions will be provided to the speaker of the Hungarian parliament and the leaders of parliamentary groups.

The spreading of “false” information that could lead to social unrest and prevent the “protection of the public” will become a crime punishable by a lengthy prison sentence. Some of Mr Orbán’s cheerleaders in the media have already suggested approvingly that this provision could lead to the arrest of critical journalists.

Orbán is not the only autocratic leader to have spotted the chance for a power grab. 



 Azerbaijan’s strongman, Ilham Aliyev, has stepped up the harassment of opposition groups. 



 Israel’s beleaguered PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, used an emergency decree to delay the start of his trial on corruption charges, marginalised parliament and moved to enact unprecedented surveillance measures. It now seems possible that a national unity government will be formed with Mr Netanyahu’s main political rival, Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party. 



 In Egypt, Guardian correspondent, Ruth Michaelson, had her press accreditation was revoked for publishing an article citing research by Canadian disease specialists estimating the actual number of Covid-19 cases in Egypt in early March was likely between 6,000 and 19,300 – at a time when Cairo’s official tally was only three cases. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in power since 2014, has been accused by rights groups of silencing independent and foreign media, and jailing dozens of reporters who published information deemed critical of his administration.



 Ominously, in the United States, Donald Trump has begun to consider himself a “wartime president”.

COVID-19 and Climate Change

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Countries around the world are enforcing lockdowns with factories shut down, businesses closed, traffic off the roads, air travel reduced and the impact of these  measures on the environment is already noticeable.


In China, nitrogen dioxide emissions, produced by cars, factories and power plants, have fallen by more than 40 per cent over many of the country’s cities under lockdown. Coal consumption at power plants has fallen by 36 per cent and restrictions have led to a 25 per cent drop in energy use and carbon emissions.In northern Italy nitrogen dioxide emissions have fallen by an average of 10 per cent per week since mid-February.
Pollution levels in the UK have also fallen since  strict new measures to halt the spread of the virus were introduced.
Besides a drop in nitrogen dioxide, dirty particulate matter (PM2.5) emitted by vehicles has reduced significantly. “In London, for example, PM2.5 is noticeably lower than would be expected for this time of year at the roadside,” according to Alastair Lewis, professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of York.
Unfortunately, according to Ian Colbeck, professor of environmental science at the University of Essex the reduction in global emissions will most likely be temporary.
“Emissions tend to bounce back fairly quickly shortly after a crisis ends,” he said. “Expect to see short-term impacts on energy and emissions disappear as governments introduce stimulus packages to increase industrial output at the end of the pandemic. Following the global financial crash in 2008-09, carbon emissions increased by 5 per cent as a result of such stimulus.”
Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), has warned that the pandemic could stall global efforts to transition towards clean energy.
“We should not allow today’s crisis to compromise our efforts to tackle the world’s inescapable challenge,” he said in a statement.
According to Professor Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College Londonthe transition to a low-carbon economy requires trillions of pounds of investment. If it is all spent on managing the coronavirus outbreak, “we will not have the financial muscle to invest in a low-carbon future”, he said.
However, like many other  environmental experts he hopes that the pandemic presents an unprecedented opportunity to curb global emissions, explaining that there is “ an amazing opportunity to shape the economy in a slightly different way”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-climate-change-pollution-emissions-china-a9427356.html

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