GMW: Corporate Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott Decision

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ubject: GMW: Corporate Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the

Dred Scott Decision

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Corporate Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott

Decision

Home Grown Axis of Evil

By HEATHER GRAY

CounterPunch, July 22, 2005

http://www.counterpunch.org/gray07222005.html

 

In June 2005 I attended the National Media Reform Conference in St.

Louis, Missouri. While there I visited the historic St. Louis courthouse

and the huge Gateway Arch by the Mississippi River that symbolizes St.

Louis as the gateway to the west. It was here that US corporate

agribusiness, the US occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott decision

intersected

in reality as well as symbolically.

 

The St. Louis courthouse is famous for the deliberations of Dred Scott

in the mid-1800's and displays in the courthouse feature the historic

documents of this renowned court case. Scott was a slave and sued for

his freedom, which was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court. The U.S.

Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1857. The court ruled that Scott was

not a citizen and therefore could not bring a case to a federal court.

In the same case, the court also ruled that the Missouri Compromise

that forbade slavery in new territories was unconstitutional as it denied

the rights of slave property owners. The decision had sweeping

consequences, not the least of which being yet another catalyst for the

initiation of the Civil War. Interestingly, two months after Supreme

Court

decision, Scott's present owner freed him anyway.

 

Standing under the Gateway Arch, and looking west, one sees the old St.

Louis courthouse, and to the east, the Mississippi River. As I looked

across the river there was, to my amazement, a warehouse-like building

with a huge rather crass sign reading " Cargill " . It was obviously a

decadent marketing ploy by the agribusiness giant, the Cargill

Corporation,

that is the largest grain trader in the world. The Cargill sign was,

therefore, in a direct path, underneath the arch, to the courthouse. I

mentioned this disturbing image across the river to one of the park

stewards. She said, " Yes, there are times I would like to bomb East St.

Louis. " I thought that was a rather interesting comment.

 

As is now well known, oil is but one of the major interests the US has

in Iraq. Because wars are invariably a pretext for economic expansion

and opportunities for corporate greed, I knew that US corporate

agribusiness was not about to be left out of the picture. My concerns

were

realized when, in April of 2003, Bush's Secretary of Agriculture Ann

Veneman appointed Daniel Amstutz, formerly an executive of the Cargill

Corporation, to oversee the " rehabilitation " of agriculture in Iraq. With

Cargill having the reputation of being one the worst violators of the

rights and independence of family farmers throughout the world, I knew

Iraqi farmers were doomed.

 

Cargill is massive. This corporate agribusiness grain trader has 800

locations in 60 countries and more than 15 lines of business. It is the

largest private company in the US and the 11th largest public or private

company in terms of sales.

 

Cargill is renowned for receiving huge subsidies from the US government

to then dump vast amounts of grains in poorer countries where Cargill

is trading. This process, in effect, undermines small farmers, helps to

destroy the local food production systems and forces dependence of

small farmers and local rural economies on corporate agribusiness.

 

Amstutz, however, brought additional corporate and international trade

qualifications to the table. He was undersecretary for international

affairs and commodity programs from 1983 to 1987 for the Reagan

administration; ambassador and chief negotiator for agriculture during

the

Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks

1987-1989;

and past president of the North American Grain Export Association. None

of these qualifications were encouraging for the well being of the

small family farmers in Iraq.

 

Oxfam's policy director Kevin Watkins said " Putting Dan Amstutz in

charge of agriculture reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam

Hussein

in the chair of a human rights commission. This guy is uniquely well

placed to advance the commercial interests of American grain companies

and bust open the Iraqi market, but singularly ill equipped to lead a

reconstruction effort in a developing country. "

 

I also knew that, as the US was poised to invade Iraq, US corporate

agribusiness companies engaged in producing and promoting genetically

modified organisms (GMO's) throughout the world would be salivating.

 

Why would corporate agribusiness be salivating??? Some history here. It

is thought that agriculture started 13,000 years ago in the Fertile

Crescent - in the area now called Iraq - where the Tigress and the

Euphrates rivers intersect. The Iraqi ancestral farmers and this

fertile land

brought us major crops such as wheat, barley, dates and pulses (see

Jared Diamond's " Guns, Germs and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies " ).

The area is hugely important in world history. Given they are considered

the initiators, for thousands of years the contributions of the Iraqi

farmers to the world's agriculture production system have been

unquestionably profound.

 

It is also likely that women were the initiators of agriculture. Women

were the gatherers in hunting and gathering pre-agricultural societies.

As women were the ones gathering nuts and roots for their communities,

they would have been the observers of seeds and their growth patterns.

This is likely why the majority of the African farmers today are women

and throughout our human history the world's farmers have largely been

women.

 

Now comes the corporate connection. Food is something everyone needs.

There is no question about this and no need for a survey - the market is

a given. Huge profits are in the offing. Controlling all aspects of

food ­ its production, packaging, distribution and commodity markets - is

the dream world of corporate agribusiness.

 

The major impediment to corporate agribusiness controlling all aspects

of food and then reaping all of the profits, however, is competition

from the independent family farmer in the US and throughout the world.

 

Throughout our history, the family farmer's controlling interest has

been protected by two of the most important components of agriculture ­

the two " s' " ­ soil and seeds.

 

Soil is not monolithic. It is amazingly and thankfully diverse. It's

components and minerals differ everywhere and farmers historically have

always adjusted to this through crop rotations that will add or remove

certain nutrients to the soil, and/or farmers will let the soil rest and

lay fallow for a specified time. Traditional farmers will also use

natural nutrients like compost and manure to replenish the soil. In this

way the soil remains " alive " with organic nutrients, earthworms and the

like. Seeds and plants are also selected for the type of soil and

farmers themselves have performed, and still perform, this selection

since

the beginning of agriculture.

 

Seeds are also not monolithic, of course, even within the same plant

family. They are amazingly diverse and the diversity of seeds is our

lifeblood. Like humans, plants are vulnerable to disease. The more

diverse

our plants, the safer we humans are. The more diverse our plants, the

less vulnerable they will be to an all-encompassing disease that could

and has wiped out some crops within days or less. Without diversity

there is virtually no resistance to disease. The great Irish potato

famine

in 1845, for example, resulted from a uniform potato production that

had no resistance to the potato blight.

 

How have farmers maintained this diversity and therefore protected our

food supply? As mentioned, they have always adjusted seeds to the type

of soil in their area by selecting and saving the seeds of successful

plants. This is a very " local " process. By doing so, for thousands of

years, farmers have thankfully maintained the diversity of our food

chain. As Martin Teitel and Kimberly Wilson note in their excellent book

" Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature " (1999):

 

" Appreciation of the importance of biodiversity dates back a hundred

centuries to the beginning of the agriculture process.Farmers remained

powerless, however, when it came to the interaction between crops and

their environments. No one could predict whether a season would be wet or

dry. Consequently, farmers quickly learned the importance of diversity:

maintenance of various crops that thrived under a variety of conditions

to avoid entire crop failures and starvation. "

 

Also, farmers have always historically saved seeds for next year's

crop. Most farmers in the world don't go to the store and supply

warehouse

to buy seeds. The seeds are their on their farm and their grandparents,

great-grandparents and great-great grandparents likely grew versions of

the same seed stock.

 

The mission of farmers historically and around the world has always

been to grow food for family and community sustenance, and not

competition

against each other - a mission that is much to the ire of western

capitalists. Invariably, farmers will also share their seeds with their

neighboring farmers. This collective and cooperative spirit of the

farming

community is legendary.

 

Vandana Shiva refers to the importance of local agriculture production

in a sustainable environment and the threat of removing it from local

control in her book " Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development "

(1989) where she writes:

 

" The existence of the feminine principle is linked with diversity and

sharing. Its destruction through homogenization and privatization leads

to the destruction of diversity and the commons. The sustenance economy

is based on a creative and organic nature, on local knowledge, on

locally recycled inputs that maintain the integrity of nature, on local

consumption for local needs, and on marketing of surplus beyond the

imperatives of equity and ecology.. "

 

It is well known and documented that small farmers everywhere are the

best stewards and sustainers of the land. They are closer to itthey know

what it takes to feed it and care for it. I've seen farmers lift soil

in their hands and know exactly what is needed in the soil. In this

sense, small family farmers are also the most efficient farmers in

terms of

crop yields, as virtually every foot on that farm is known to them. To

be sure, millions of farm families ­ women, men and children -

throughout the world from the Philippines to the US are sophisticated

homegrown

agronomists who work the fields.

 

I can easily be accused of romanticizing the farming profession, but

I've seen farmers with a glow in their eye when talking about being

involved in one of the most sacred of all professions ­ the practice of

nurturing and witnessing the flowering of crops from small seeds and,

consequently, sustaining all of us through the production of food.

 

The world's family farmers now and historically are our unsung heroes!

 

So what has corporate agribusiness done to disrupt the powerful

soil-seed mantra and erode the independence of family farmers?

Chemicals were

employed that neutralize and invariably have polluted and poisoned our

soil, which destroys its diversity. Seed patents have been intensified,

coupled with the development of genetically modified organisms (GMO's).

Corporations have attempted to make farmers dependent on all of these

interventions.

 

After WWII there were vast amounts of nitrogen left over from making

bombs. Dow, Shell and Dupont decided they could sell the nitrogen to

farmers for profit and thus began the now infamous " green revolution "

leading to huge amounts of chemical poisons in agriculture. The

complicity

of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the green revolution is also a

major factor. The result has been a devastating farmer dependency on

chemical poisons along with the destruction of our soil and leading to us

humans ingesting more chemicals (read Al Krebs' excellent " The

Corporate Reapers: the Book of Agribusiness " - 1992). The chemical and

poison

additives in soil make it easier for seed business' to disregard the

diversity of our fertile soil which then paves the way for less diverse

and genetically altered seed stocks.

 

Farmers who have used these poisons, and are now attempting to veer

away from this dependency, describe their soil as " dead " . It can become

alive again, but it takes a few years.

 

GMO's are seeds composed of DNA from an altogether different species.

Historically when we have bred our plants we have done so with the same

plant family. The long- term health consequences of the GMO produced

crops that we now ingest are unknown at this point, yet we do know that

this science leads to an irreversible erosion of genetics and encourages

monoculture. As Teitel and Wilson explain:

 

" The genetic engineering of our food is the most radical transformation

in our diet since the invention of agriculture (thousands of years

ago). Genetic engineering has allowed scientists to splice fish genes

into

tomatoes, to put virus genes in squash, bacterium genes in corn, and

human genes in tobacco (to " grow " pharmaceuticals).Normally the boundaries

between species are set by nature. Until recently, those biological

barriers have never been crossed. Genetic engineering allows these limits

to be exceeded ­ with results that no one can predict. "

 

Companies will then patent the GMO seeds and encourage farmers to grow

them. Once seeds are purchased farmers are required to sign contracts

specifying they what cannot do with these seeds such as save them or

share them. To further complicate matters, companies, citing legal

priorities due to patent rights, will prosecute farmers who save seeds

rather

than purchase the seeds from the seed company the next year. The major

GMO crops grown since GMO soy was first commercialized in 1996 are

corn, soy, cotton and canola. According to the Center for Food Safety,

the

Monsanto corporation, headquartered in St. Louis, " provides the seed

technology for 90 percent of the world's genetically engineered crops. "

 

There's a vicious war against family farmers right now that is

relentless. Companies will even sue if farmer's non-GMO crops have been

polluted by GMO pollen and are planted without permission (see the

2005 report

by the Center for Food Safety entitled " Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers " ).

 

What corporate agribusiness is attempting to do to independent family

farmers is not quite slavery but becoming close. It is attempting to

take away the independence of farmers through basically contract farming.

This harkens back to the oppressive sharecropping or tenant farmer

relationships set up by southern plantation owners for freed slaves and

poor white farmers in the South. Plantation owners wanted to keep freed

slaves under their yoke and make use of their labor. So they set up a

sharecropping and tenant systems of farming with various types of

contractual arrangements that invariably benefited the plantation

owners rather

than the aspiring freed slaves. So, too, it's the consolidated

corporate agribusiness companies that benefit in today's scenario

rather than

the farmers.

 

Throughout southeast Asia, destabilization of traditional farming

practices from corporate agribusiness intervention has been rampant.

In the

late 1980's, for example, I spent time with rice farmers in the

Philippines. They told me that they were encouraged to grow a new higher

yielding rice plant developed by the International Rice Institute, and

it's

affiliated corporate agribusiness companies. They were excited about

growing and potentially exporting more rice. It made no sense to them

that they could not set the seed aside for next year's crop, as Filipino

farmers have done for hundreds of years. It also made no sense that the

only way the crop would be fertile was through use of fertilizers

supplied by agribusiness companies. Such chemical use was also an unknown

practice for these farmers.

 

The next year, hundreds of the small rice farmers went out of business

because they couldn't afford to purchase the seed or fertilizer. I

asked them why they didn't go back to planting their old rice crops. They

told me they couldn't because they didn't have the seeds anymore as the

seed had always been set aside for the next year's crop. As a result

they were dependent on agribusiness for their seeds ­ there was no

option. Most of the traditional Filipino rice seeds are now in U.S. seed

banks.

 

In the late 1990's there were reports of some 4,000 Filipino rice

farmers who died due to pesticide (chemical poison) use. The

speculation, I

was told by Food First in California, was that the higher yielding rice

plant attracted a pest the farmers had never before encountered and

they were then told to use chemical poisons that they also had never

used.

It's thought that either they didn't know how to use the poisons or

they used it to commit suicide.

 

Most of the world has resisted, in some way, the wholesale invasion of

GMO crops. No country in their right mind would turn over their food

sovereignty to US corporate agribusiness. Not to be defeated, corporate

agribusiness has sought loopholes in vulnerable areas in the world. They

seek regions where the implementation of their insidious schemes is

virtually a given and from which they can force the world to accept their

devastating and destabilizing agricultural model. Currently, the US

military occupied Iraq is a prime area and the continent of Africa is

another.

 

Corporate agribusiness is enormously dangerous and the increased,

sometimes forced, dependency of the world's farmers on corporate

agribusiness is a threat of major proportions. Think of it ­ virtually

all of our

ancestors were farmers and for 13,000 years we humans have fed

ourselves quite well without the likes of Cargill and Monsanto that

evolved

just decades ago. We don't need them! To further exacerbate the problem,

they make us all vulnerable for their short-term corporate greed. As Jim

Hightower, the populist and former Agriculture Commissioner of Texas,

once said, " We need to place our nation's growth not on the Rockefellers

but on the little fellers because is we do it will be based on genius

and not greed. " This should be the message for every nation!

 

Of necessity, most agriculture advocates would agree that agriculture

should remain primarily local and not global. This is the essence of

food security - locally controlled and produced food.

 

The symbolism, much less the reality, of making Iraq's fertile crescent

into one of the major areas for GMO production would be altogether too

tantalizing for corporate agribusiness companies like Cargill and

Monsanto. Dan Amstutz obviously had input into the disastrous

" transfer of

sovereignty " policies developed by the former Coalition Provisional

Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Of the 100

orders

left by Bremer, one is Order 81 on " Patent, Industrial Design,

Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety " . Most are

saying that this order, if implemented, is a declaration of war

against the

Iraqi farmers.

 

As the Grain and Focus on the Global South (www.grain.org) reported in

October 2004

 

" For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially

unregulated, informal seed supply system.This is now history. The CPA has

made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new

varieties registered under the law. Iraqis may continue to use and save

from their traditional seed stocks or what's left of them after the years

of war and drought, but that is not the agenda for reconstruction

embedded in the ruling. The purpose of the law is to facilitate the

establishment of a new seed market in Iraq, modified or not, which

farmers

would have to purchase afresh every single cropping season.Eliminating

competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies (i.e.

major

international corporate seed traders such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer

and Dow Chemical).The new patent law also explicitly promotes the

commercialization of genetically modified seeds in Iraq. "

 

Upon reflection, I decided this lineup of US corporate agribusiness and

the Dred Scott decision is appropriate. It is appropriate that they

face each other as they are obviously in league. To combine this with the

US military occupation of Iraq and the attempts at corporate

agribusiness abuse and control of Iraqi agriculture is mind-boggling.

All three

represent a combination of greed, unjust ownership (humans, seeds etc.)

and violations of immense dimensions that impact the integrity and

safety of the planet and its inhabitants.

 

We managed to legally end slavery in the United States but it took a

war to do so. Today, the world's independent farmers also need to be

freed from the oppressive yoke of corporate agribusiness and the on-going

efforts to intensify and expand this control.

 

Regarding our food system overall, it is too important to be handed

over to unfettered capitalists and food should not be treated like any

other commodity. Agriculture and small farmers are just too important to

us. Let the corporate capitalists perhaps make shoes or combs or

computers, although they are probably making a mess of that as well by

destroying competition. But by all means we need to keep their slimy

hands off

the substance of life - the world's agriculture production system.

 

Heather Gray produces " Just Peace " on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering

local, regional, national and international news. She has been a part of

the food security movement for 16 years in Africa, Asia and the United

States. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at

hmcgray.

 

 

 

 

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