Tag: Agriculture

  • Bayer’s “Backward” Claim: A Bid to Reap Control of Indian Agriculture

    For some critics, if one firm tops a league table for anti-people, anti-nature business practices, it is Bayer (although there are many other worthy candidates). Nevertheless, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) signed a memorandum of understanding with Bayer in September 2023.   Bayer’s approach to agricultural development involves promoting a model of industrial agriculture dependent on […]

  • The Decline of Summer Festivals

    The Decline of Summer Festivals

    Bonfire Night, St. John’s Eve by Jack Butler Yeats (Ireland) Traditional summer festivals have always revolved around the solstice and bonfires on the feast of St. John (24 June) in many countries. Maypole dancing was also an important aspect of some rural and agricultural summer events, and other summer festivals like Ferragosto (15 August), involved […]

  • The War on Food and the War on Humanity: Platforms of Control and the Unbreakable Spirit

    Max Weber (1864-1920) was a prominent German sociologist who developed influential theories on rationality and authority. He examined different types of rationality that underpinned systems of authority. He argued that modern Western societies were based on legal-rational authority and had moved away from systems that were based on traditional authority and charismatic authority. Traditional authority […]

  • From Agrarianism to Transhumanism: The Long March to Dystopia

    A total demolition of the previous forms of existence is underway: how one comes into the world, biological sex, education, relationships, the family, even the diet that is about to become synthetic. — Silvia Guerini, radical ecologist, in From the ‘Neutral’ Body to the Posthuman Cyborg: A Critique of Gender Ideology (2023) We are currently […]

  • Stranglehold of Imperialism: Inflicting Hunger and Hardship in Africa

    In late June, Kenyan President William Ruto backtracked on a tax-hiking finance bill after protests left at least 20 people dead and more than 150 injured when police opened fire with live ammunition. According to Patrick Gathara of The New Humanitarian, the youth-led protests were triggered by a range of proposed new taxes that will […]

  • Amazon Gets Fresh, Bayer Loves Basmati: Toxic Influences in Indian Agriculture

    The citizens of India have a problem. In what the media like to call ‘the world’s biggest democracy’, there is a serious, proven conflict of interest among officials in the areas of science, agriculture and agricultural research that results in privileging the needs of powerful private interests ahead of farmers and ordinary people. This has […]

  • War on Farmers: World Bank Sowing Seed Colonialism in Africa

    In Kenya, a law was passed in 2012 that prohibits farmers’ rights to save, share, exchange or sell unregistered seeds. Farmers could face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to 1 million Kenyan shillings (equivalent to nearly four years’ wages for a farmer). However, in 2022, Kenyan smallholder farmers launched […]

  • At the Edge of Apocalypse

    Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid system, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink, and millions displaced. Welcome to the future of climate change… Pakistan. If one could classify a global warming beta test as a success towards an ultimate goal of apocalypse, unfortunately, it has turned Pakistan into a country populated […]

  • GM Golden Rice Stopped

    On 19 April 2024, the Philippines Supreme Court issued a cease-and-desist order on the commercial propagation of genetically modified (GM) Golden Rice and GM eggplant in the country. The Stop Golden Rice Network says that the court decision is a victory for farmers and consumers everywhere as the decision goes beyond Golden Rice and insecticidal […]

  • Spring Traditions and Celebrations: The Past, The Present and the Future of Farming

    Spring Traditions and Celebrations: The Past, The Present and the Future of Farming

    The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Introduction Eleanor Parker writes in her book, Winters in the World, that “in Anglo-Saxon poetry winter is often imagined as a season when the earth and human beings are imprisoned, kept captive by the ‘fetters of the frost’. Naturally enough, then, spring is […]

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