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interests and the same agribusiness giants backing it. From early in the 1970s, agribusiness producers controlled US In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson also used food as a food supplies but soon they would go global on a scale without weapon. He wanted recipient nations to agree to administration _ precedent. The goal: to make "staggering profits" by "restructur[ing] and Rockefeller preconditions that population control and opening the way Americans grew food to feed themselves and the world". their markets to US industry were part of the deal. It also Ronald Reagan continued Carter's policy and let the top four or five involved training developing-world agricultural scientists and monopoly players control it. It led to an unprecedented agronomists in the latest production concepts so they could apply "concentration and transformation of American agriculture", with them at home. This "carefully constructed network later proved independent family farmers driven off their land through forced sales crucial" to the Rockefeller strategy to "spread the use of and bankruptcies so that "more efficient" agribusiness giants could genetically engineered crops around the world", helped along with move in with "factory farms". The remaining small producers USAID funding and CIA mischief. became virtual serfs as "contract farmers". America's landscape was "Green Revolution" tactics were painful and took a devastating toll © changing, with people trampled on for the sake of profits. on peasant farmers, destroying their livelihoods and forcing them into Engdahl explains the gradual process of "wholesale merger[s] shantytown slums. These people, desperate to survive and easy prey —_ and consolidation...of American food production...into giant for any way to do it, provided cheap, exploitable labour. corporate global concentrations” with familiar names: Cargill, The "Revolution" also harmed the land. Monocultural practices Archer Daniels Midland, Smithfield Foods and ConAgra. As they displace diversity, destroy soil fertility and decrease crop yields over __ grew bigger, so did their bottom lines, with annual equity returns time. The indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides can eventually _rising from 13 per cent in 1993 to 23 per cent in 1999. cause serious health problems. Engdahl quotes an analyst who called Hundreds of thousands of small farmers lost out; their numbers the "Green Revolution" a "chemical revolution" that developing dropped by 300,000 from 1979 to 1998. It was even worse for hog states couldn't afford. This revolution began the process of debt farmers, with a drop from 600,000 to 157,000 in the same period, enslavement from IMF, World Ban! so that three per cent of producers and private bank loans. Large could control 50 per cent of the landowners could afford the latter; This "carefully constructed market. The social costs were small farmers couldn't, and as a result staggering (and continue to be), as were often bankrupted. That, of network later proved crucial” to "entire rural communities collapsed course, was the whole idea. the Rockefeller strategy to "spread and rural towns became ghost towns". The "Green Revolution" was based Consider the consequences. By 2004: on the "proliferation of new hybrid the use of genetically engineered * the four largest beef packers seeds in developing markets'—seeds crops around the world’, helped controlled 84 per cent of steer and that characteristically lack reproductive . . heifer slaughter: Tyson, Cargill, Swift capacity. Declining yields meant along with USAID funding and National Beef Packing; farmers had to buy seeds every year i i + four giants controlled 64 per cent of from large multinational producers that and CIA mischief. hog production: Smithfield Foods, control their parental seed lines in Tyson, Swift and Hormel Foods; house. A handful of company giants * three companies controlled 71 per eld patents on them and used them to lay the groundwork for the cent of soybean crushing: Cargill, ADM and Bunge; ater GMO revolution. Their scheme soon became evident: * three giants controlled 63 per cent of all flour milling; traditional crops had to give way to high-yield varieties (HY V) of * five companies controlled 90 per cent of the global grain trade; hybrid wheat, corn and rice, with major chemical inputs. + four other companies controlled 89 per cent of the breakfast Initially, growth rates were impressive but they didn't last for cereal market—Kellogg, General Mills, Kraft Foods and Quaker long. In countries like India, agricultural output slowed down and Oats; fell into decline. They were the losers so that agribusiness giants ¢ Cargill, having acquired Continental Grain in 1998, controlled 40 could exploit large new markets for their chemicals, machinery per cent of national grain elevator capacity; and other product inputs. It was the beginning of "agribusiness", + four large agrichemical/seed giants controlled over 75 per cent of and it went hand in hand with the "Green Revolution" strategy the nation's seed corn sales and 60 per cent of it for soybeans, while that would later embrace plant genetic alterations. also having the largest share of the agricultural chemical market: Two Harvard Business School professors were involved early Monsanto, Novartis, Dow Chemical and DuPont; on: John Davis and Ray Goldberg. They teamed up with Russian * six companies controlled three-fourths of the global pesticides economist Wassily Leontief, got funding from the Rockefeller market; and Ford foundations and initiated a four-decade revolution to * Monsanto and DuPont controlled 60 per cent of the US corn and dominate the food industry. It was based on "vertical soybean seed market—all of it patented GMO seeds. integration", of the kind that Congress outlawed after giant In addition: conglomerates and trusts like Standard Oil used them to * 10 large food retailers controlled $649 billion in global sales in monopolise entire sectors of key industries and crush competition. 2002, and the top 30 food retailers accounted for one-third of global This vertical integration was revived under President Jimmy grocery sales. Carter, a Trilateral Commission founding member, and disguised as "deregulation" to dismantle "decades of carefully constructed... Continued next issue... health, food safety and consumer protection laws". These laws would now give way under this new wave of industry-friendly About the Author/Reviewer: vertical integration. A propaganda campaign claimed that Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached by government was the problem, that it encroached too much on our —_— email at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Visit his blogsite at lives and had to be rolled back for greater personal "freedom". sjlendman.blogspot.com. About the Author/Reviewer: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached by email at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Visit his blogsite at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 16 = NEXUS This "carefully constructed and CIA mischief. Continued next issue... www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY — MARCH 2008