Smart Cities

This article in the March 9th 2019 online edition of The Guardian is titled How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms begins by stating that:

Across the midwest, the rise of factory farming is destroying rural communities. And the massive corporations behind this devastation are now eyeing a post-Brexit UK market.

This article comes hot on the heels of another Guardian article that I read titled Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic from March 7th 2019. It seems that this MSM site is putting out some reasonable content from time to time. The article goes on to describe the rise of concentrated animal feeding operations or Cafos as they are known. To quote:

 “They are vertically integrated, from animal genetics to grocery store. What they charge isn’t based upon what it costs to produce, and it’s not based on supply and demand, because they know what they need to make a profit. What they have done, through government support and taxpayer support, is to intentionally overproduce so that the price stays low, sometimes below the cost of production. That kicks their competition out of the market. Then they become the only player in town. 

“Over time, it has extracted wealth and power from communities. We can see how that has impacted rural main streets. You can see the boarded-up storefronts. You can see the lack of economic opportunity.”

Gibbons says that corporations game the system by obtaining low-interest, federally guaranteed loans to build Cafos that then overproduce. But they know the government will buy up the surplus to stabilise prices. 

“The system has been set up for the benefit of the factory farm corporations and their shareholders at the expense of family farmers, the real people, our environment, our food system,” he adds. 

“The thing that is really pervasive about it is that they control the rules of the game because they control the democratic process. It’s a blueprint. We’re paying for our own demise. 

“It would be a different argument if it was just based upon inevitability or based on competition. But it’s not based upon competition: it’s based upon squelching competition.”

Here is a blog that explains more about what cafos are all about. These types of operations mean that more people are moving to the cities as they simply can't earn a living in the countryside. Once the farms are abandoned:

“Investors buy the land, and they have tractors and combines that you can run by computer,” she said. “They’ll hire somebody to sit in a little office somewhere and run that stuff off the computer and farm the land that way. Now what you’ve done is you have lost the innate knowledge of how to grow food and raise animals. You’ve lost a whole generation of it, probably two. Now we are going to rely on a few corporations to decide who is going to eat and who isn’t. We’re one generation away from that picture right now.” 

In Williams, Schutt says he’s seeing a community of owners becoming workers: “It’s going to be like Russia with serfs. If you want to work on a farm, you’ll have to work for them. We’ll give you a job, but you’re going to be working on our terms. We control everything. Small farms can’t survive.” 

The phrase I've highlighted is quite telling: you have lost the innate knowledge of how to grow food and raise animals. Already urban dwellers are totally reliant on the local supermarket for their food but some still have some idea of how to grow their own. This will change as the urban populations swell and the percentage of those living outside the cities decline. Lack of services such as hospitals and schools and increased taxation on those living outside of cities will ensure that this trend is sustained. Urban dwellers will huddle in their smart city apartment blocks, their every move tracked by ubiquitous surveillance technology and their every purchase scrutinised in a society that has gone cashless.

The Internet will be sanitised and free of fake news. Citizens will be rewarded with credit points for positive and constructive social media comments, points will be deducted for espousing views outside the mainstream and re-education classes may be required for persistent offenders. Mandatory vaccinations with contents unknown (as now) to recipients will reinforce compliance via chemical means. Education will distort history beyond recognition and shape students to feel a sense of connection only with their benevolent overlords.