Twitter Alert

 I saw this article in my Twitter feed this morning. Figure 1 shows a screenshot.

Figure 1: screenshot from Twitter feed

I thought I'd follow the link attached as so I clicked on it, only to be greeted by the following Twitter warning shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: screenshot of Twitter's warning

Knowledge is a dangerous thing and Twitter has recognised that if you go to this site you may become more knowledgeable! So what is on this potentially unsafe site? Here's the article's headline:

Land Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as ‘Feeding the World’

You can click on the link to read the full article but it concludes:

The web that global capitalism weaves in a quest to seek out new profits, capture new markets and control common resources (commonwealth) is destroying farmer livelihoods, the environment and health under the bogus claim of ‘feeding the world’. Those farmers who survive the profiteering strategies of dispossession and imperialism are to become incorporated into a system of contract farming dictated by global agri-food giants tied to an exploitative food regime based on market dependency and corporate control. A regime that places profit ahead of biodiverse food security, healthy diets and the environment.

There are some interesting links within the article: one is to a article in GRAINS, "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". The article is titled Barbarians at the barn: private equity sinks its teeth into agriculture. Here is an excerpt:

Private equity is only one class of investors taking control of assets in the food and agriculture sphere – from farmland to grain terminals to meat processing plants to food delivery – and transforming realities for farmers, fishers and workers. But it is a powerful class. Though its operations are opaque and barely accounted for, private equity as a sector has grown enormously since the 2008 financial crisis and is becoming more concentrated. It is also becoming increasingly present in the global South.

This trend is part of broader process by which the world of finance – banks, funds, insurance companies and the like – is gaining control over the real economy, including forests, watersheds and rural people's territories. This is called financialisation. Apart from uprooting communities and grabbing resources to entrench an industrial and export-oriented model of agriculture, it is shifting power to remote board rooms occupied by people with no connection to farming, much less local concerns, and who are merely in it to make money.

All of this is quite disturbing and part of an overarching plan to destroy small farmers and drive farmers off the land into smart cities or, if they remain, they remain as serfs. 

There is a good article in grain.org about the growing influence of RCEP:

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a proposed mega-trade agreement that involves 10 countries of Southeast Asia and six of their trading partners. If adopted, it will be the biggest trade deal in the world. RCEP will not just change rules on the export and import of goods and services; it will change how governments decide on rights to land and who has access to it. Therefore, it has the potential to increase land grabbing across Asia – already a huge problem in this region. The implications are far-reaching, with millions of farmers' and fisherfolks' livelihoods at stake in RCEP member countries where the population is struggling to feed itself.

Whether the mega-trade deal goes ahead or not, the trend seems unstoppable. The barbarians are indeed at the barn.