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Yves here. Many of you have probably noticed some of the many signs of increasing corporate buyouts in the agriculture industry. I knew Japanese companies in the bubble years that were acquiring chicken farms and processors in Vietnam and hedgies in the 1990s who were buying agricultural land in Africa and South America. In more recent years, China has been buying food producer in Africa. Corporate interests have been hoovering up potable water sources in the US and many other major countries. And these examples only scratch the surface. This post describes how this trend, along with increase...

Yves here. It’s disturbing to see how far the influence of the Gates Foundation extends. And worse, it too regularly stands for what the sort of leading edge [neoliberal] conventional wisdom that McKinsey regularly promotes. This post described how the much hyped green revolution, instead of increasing output, has resulted in environmental degradation and exposure to toxic substances even as the number of underfed increased. Since the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) was launched in 2006, yields have barely risen, while rural poverty remains endemic, and would have increased...

NationofChange Despite pressure from US and Bayer, Mexico will ban glyphosate “Our rationale is based on the precautionary principle in the face of environmental risks as well as the right of the Mexican government to take action in favor of the public good.” As reported by NationofChange journalist Marlee Kokotovic in mid-February, Bayer and US officials had been pressuring Mexico to abandon their intended ban on glyphosate. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had given farmers until 2024 to stop the use of glyphosate. López Obrador, however, did not give in to i...

Yves here. The US press has spilled some pixels on the concern that the poor and minorities will have less access to Covid vaccines. That is particularly troubling since they are most exposed to Covid, both risk of contagion (high representation in front-line worker jobs, greater odds of living in crowded housing) and adverse outcomes, due to health/access to medical care being correlated with income. The US media has been far less interested in the fact that many poor countries will be in the back of the line in being able to procure Covid vaccines, and can’t afford to build costly cold ch...

13 December, 2020 Some people believe that 13 is an unlucky number for various reasons. Today is December 13, the doomsday for journalists and media freedom in Sri Lanka. We, journalists working at the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (ANCL) popularly known as Lake House remember December 13, in year 2018 very well. It was two years ago on a day like this that we faced the ugliest mob attack in Sri Lanka’s print media history, launched by the goons of the Yahapalana Government. But it was neither the first nor the last attack on journalists by colonialists, capitalists, and thugs who...