GRAIN
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. More info on their website, www.grain.org
Techno Feudalism Takes Root on the Farm in India and China
– Techno feudalism: a term first coined by Yanis Varoufakis in his 2023 book Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, describes a rent-driven, technology-dominated society—echoing conditions similar to those that existed before capitalism, known as feudalism. The largest tech corporations have all launched initiatives in agriculture in recent years. But, among these tech giants, Microsoft is…
Twenty years of bilaterals.org, twenty years of fighting FTAs
When bilaterals.org was set up back in 2004, the world looked rather different. There was a global network of activist organisations fighting the World Trade Organisation (WTO), coordinated for the most part by Our World is Not for Sale, while social movement struggles against bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and investment treaties were very isolated from…
Food Inflation
Food inflation: the math doesn’t add up without factoring in corporate power – Large farmers’ protests broke out in at least 65 countries over the past year. From India to Kenya through Colombia and France, desperation has hit a breaking point. Farmers warn that without better prices and more protection, their future is at risk….
Regenerative Agriculture: a Good Idea Until Corporations Got Hold of It
Food and agribusiness giants have coalesced around the term “regenerative agriculture” to signal their commitment to climate change and sustainability. This year’s COP28 will showcase regenerative agriculture prominently, and the term is gaining traction in policy circles, investor conferences and supermarket shelves. But it’s just the latest iteration of an on-going corporate strategy to undercut…
Water Grabbing: Squeezing Communities Dry
In 2023 the United Nations’ authority on water warned that a global water crisis was imminent. For many communities, this crisis is already upon them, with water shortages affecting over a third of the world’s population, and many others dealing with devastating floods caused by climate change. The UN predicts the situation will get significantly…
Transgenic Rice Proposed as a ‘Solution’ for Africa
Scientists with an international rice initiative have been raising the alarm about a strain of bacterial blight causing outbreaks in rice fields in East Africa, and they say the patented transgenic varieties they have developed are the solution. The scientists are with the Healthy Crops Project, a non-profit consortium funded by the Gates Foundation that…
The Well is Running Dry on Irrigated Agriculture
Too much rain, but not enough water. That’s the title of a recent article about the massive rainstorms that hit California last December. The US state got a lot of badly needed rain, but, as pointed out in the article, this was nowhere near enough to save it from the severe drought the region is…
Getting out of the food-energy-climate crisis
On 11 October 2022, the International Monetary Fund’s head of research, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, warned that today’s high energy prices were not going away any time soon. The “energy crisis”, he cautioned, “is not a transitory shock”. The same could be said for what he called the “food crisis”. As Gourinchas noted, today’s high prices for…
Taking pensions out of financial markets
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Labor unions and social movements in Brazil have been fighting a pitched battle to stop their far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, from pursuing his drive to privatize many of the country’s most important public assets. But last year they suffered a major defeat when Bolsanaro’s government sold off the nation’s largest public water utility to a…
An agribusiness greenwashing glossary
The global food system is broken. It is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it is the leading driver behind the collapse of the world’s biodiversity. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 people around the world go to bed hungry, while hundreds of millions more suffer from diabetes, obesity, cancers and other health…