Nelson worked with his brother, JD III, who set up his own Agriculture Development Council in 1953. They shared a common goal - "cartelization of world agriculture and food supplies under their corporate hegemony." At its heart, it aimed to introduce modern agriculture techniques to increase crop yields under the false claim of wanting to reduce hunger. The same seduction was later used to promote the Gene Revolution with Rockefeller interests and the same agribusiness giants backing it.
In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson also used food as a weapon. He wanted recipient nations to agree to administration and Rockfeller preconditions that population control and opening their markets to US industry was part of the deal. It also involved training developing world agriculture scientists and agronomists in the latest production concepts so they could apply them at home. This "carefully constructed network later proved crucial" to the Rockefeller strategy to "spread the use of genetically-engineered crops around the world," helped along with USAID funding and CIA mischief.
"Green Revolution" tactics were painful and took a devastating toll on peasant farmers. They destroyed their livelihoods and forced them into shantytown slums that now surround large Third World cities. There they provide cheap exploitable labor from people desperate to survive and easy prey for any way to do it.
The "Revolution" also harmed the land. Monoculture displaces diversity, soil fertility and crop yields decrease over time, and indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides causes serious later health problems. Engdahl quoted an analyst calling the "Green Revolution" a "chemical revolution" developing states couldn't afford. That began the process of debt enslavement from IMF, World Bank and private bank loans. Large landowners can afford the latter. Small farmers can't and often, as a result, are bankrupted. That, of course, is the whole idea.
The "Green Revolution" was based on the "proliferation of new hybrid seeds in developing markets" that characteristically lack reproductive capacity. Declining yields meant farmers had to buy seeds every year from large multinational producers that control their parental seed lines in house. A handful of company giants held patents on them and used them to lay the groundwork for the later GMO revolution. Their scheme was soon evident. Tradition farming had to give way to High Yield Varieties (HYV) of hybrid wheat, corn and rice with major chemical inputs.
Initially, growth rates were impressive but not for long. In countries like India, agricultural output slowed and fell. They were losers so agribusiness giants could exploit large new markets for their chemicals, machinery and other product inputs. It was the beginning of "agribusiness," and it went hand-in-hand with the "Green Revolution" strategy that would later embrace plant genetic alterations.
Two Harvard Business School professors were involved early on - John Davis and Ray Goldberg. They teamed with Russian economist, Wassily Leontief, got Rockefeller and Ford Foundation funding, and initiated a four-decade revolution to dominate the food industry. It was based on "vertical integration" of the kind Congress outlawed when giant conglomerates or trusts like Standard Oil used them to monopolize entire sectors of key industries and crush competition.
It was revived under Trilateralist President Jimmy Carter disguised as "deregulation" to dismantle "decades of carefully constructed....health, food safety and consumer protection laws." They would now give way under a new wave of industry-friendly vertical integration. Supported by a public campaign, it claimed that government was the problem, it encroached too much on our lives, and it had to be rolled back for greater personal "freedom."
Early in the 1970s, agribusiness producers controlled US food supplies. They'd now go global on a scale without precedent. The goal - "staggering profits" by "restructur(ing) the way Americans grew food to feed themselves and the world." Ronald Reagan continued Carter's policy and let the top four or five monopoly players control it. It led to an unprecedented "concentration and transformation of American agriculture" with independent family farmers driven off their land through forced sales and bankruptcies so "more efficient" agribusiness giants could move in with "Factory Farms." Remaining small producers became virtual serfs as "contract farmers." America's landscape was changing with people trampled on for profits.
Engdahl explained a gradual process of "wholesale merger(s) and consolidation....of American food production....into giant corporate global concentrations" with familiar names - Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Smithfield Foods and ConAgra. As they grew bigger, so did their bottom lines with annual equity returns rising from 13% in 1993 to 23% in 1999. Hundreds of thousands of small farmers lost out for it as their numbers dropped by 300,000 from 1979 to 1998 alone. It was even worse for hog farmers with a drop from 600,000 to 157,000 so 3% of producers could control 50% of the market.
The social costs were staggering and continue to be as "entire rural communities collapsed and rural towns became ghost towns." Consider the consequences:
-- by 2004, the four largest beef packers controlled 84% of steer and heifer slaughter - Tyson, Cargill, Swift and National Beef Packing;
-- four giants controlled 64% of hog production - Smithfield Foods, Tyson, Swift and Hormel;
-- three companies controlled 71% of soybean crushing - Cargill, ADM and Bunge;
-- three giants controlled 63% of all flour milling, and five companies controlled 90% of global grain trade;
-- four other companies controlled 89% of the breakfast cereal market - Kellogg, General Mills, Kraft Foods and Quaker Oats;
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
STEPHEN VERY SAD BUT TRUE, EVERY WORD. AND THEIR NO DONE YET, I MY SELF DON'T DRINK MILK FOR THE REASONS IN YOUR ARTICLE. I THINK THAT THE ROCKEFELLERS ARE GETING OLD, AND THIS FOOD POPULATION CONTROL, AND THEIR AIDS VIEURS IS NOT WORKING FAST ENOUGH, THIS MIGHT BE WHY THE FORD FOUNDATION AND ALSO THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, ARE ALSO FUNDING LA RAZA AND THE OTHER OPEN BORDERS GROUPS TO LOWER THE LIVING STANDARDS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AND ARE, FUNDING THE UN FOR WORLD GUN CONTROL,IF THEY GET GLOBAL GUN CONTROL, IT WILL TAKE THEM TO THE NEXT LEVEL OF POPULATION CONTROL. WHERE IS OUR DEFENCE, AND HOW DO WE STOP THESE GLOBALIST, THEY CONTROL THE MONEY OF THE WORLD, THEY CONTROL THE WARS OF THE WORLD, AND SAD BUT TRUE THEY ARE IN CONTROL OF OUR GOVERNMENT AND OUR ELECTIONS, AND AS WE SEE ELECTION WORLD WIDE. IT LOOKS LIKE IT WILL COME DOWN TO POPULATION CONTROL BY WHAT EVER MEANS AND AT THEIR PLEASURE. STEPHEN VERY GOOD ARTICLE, THESE GLOBALIST NEED TO BE EXPOSED, MAYBE THE MORE THEY ARE EXPOSED LIKE THIS, THEY CAN BE STOPPED. ALL COMES DOWN TO HOW LONG WILL HUMANITY LET THIS GO ON.
by
RICHARD SHADE (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 460 comments)
on Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 9:10:27 AM
As usual a superlative piece. Personally I consider these Corps and all who support them as potential mass murderers.
Bopahl is a perfect example and using The US to force through their patent regime in india literally takes food from the mouths of the poor.
I wonder how much more will Americans tolerate of their obscene behaviours before they realize that these companies are seen as arms of US policy and are despised as a consequence. If all these peasants see is avoricious oppressive Americans Corporations can you blame them?
US Capitalism needs urgent surgery before the cancer consumes us all.... Appologies for the colourful if not apt metaphore.
andris
by
Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 532 comments)
on Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 11:32:46 PM
