Science has advanced to the point where enough food could be produced to feed the world, but instead millions starve. And the dwindling numbers of consumers who can still afford to buy the food risk illness, disease and even death. What is the cause of this inexcusable situation?
Some say science and technology are the perpetrators, that we should go back to an earlier era. But it’s science that allows us to produce enough to feed everyone. The problem is not science, but how science is used. How science is used has to do with the fact that, under capitalism, food is a commodity, produced and sold for a profit, not for human need. The food corporations care little about whether everyone eats, or the damage their product may do to the human body. They care only about their profits.
What happened after WWII illustrates the contradiction between using science to produce for profit versus human need. After the war, the agricultural industry started using DDT, an insect killer, and many other dangerous chemicals, on food crops. Bugs were eating up U.S. production, so in this sense the use of chemicals was a giant step forward. Europe was starving and needed U.S. food. Soon, food production was booming. But the powers that be insured that there would be little public debate about the negative impact of these chemicals. Then, in the 1980s, another unprecedented step was taken. The U.S. Supreme Court for the first time allowed patents on seeds, laying the groundwork for a handful of monopolies to take control of the world’s food supply. Today, the U.S. agrochemical giant Monsanto produces a seed that self-destructs annually, making it necessary for farmers to purchase new seed each year. The result? The company increased their projected 2012 gross profit by $250 million, from $9.5 billion to $9.75 billion. And, more importantly, whoever controls the seeds controls the world’s food.
The question we face is how to use science to improve food safety, reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers, increase nutritional content and enhance per-acre production in a new system producing for consumption, not profit. Genetically modified food, for example, is not the problem. It is how and why the technology is being used. This could be a great way to improve the food supply if used in the right manner. Instead, the technology is being rushed to market to increase profits without proper testing or, indeed, discussion on how to use it for everyone’s benefit. In producing for profit, science and technology are only used to increase profitability, even at the expense of the health and welfare of the entire world.
Clearly, we the people of the world are in a life or death fight. We are posed against a giant global food industry that, if allowed to continue on its course, could destroy humanity. A new global economy and a cooperative global society are needed where food and other necessities are distributed to all by need rather than by money. How do we get to such a new world? First, in the U.S., we have to recognize that the fight to transform private corporations into public property is a political fight. Second, we must see that the Democratic and Republican Parties are the twin corporate parties. Both have, for example, set conditions for the $3 trillion chemical industry to thrive. Third, workers must fight for their own independent political party that will wage the fight to create safe food and for food to be a human right. Fourth, we must connect with the billions of hungry people and farmers worldwide who are already waging war against these giant corporations.
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People's Tribune 'crucial' says contributor:
Never has it been more crucial to strengthen and expand the circulation of the People's Tribune. Leadership is emerging among the people who are "poor in things and rich in spirit"- and they need the news and analysis from the nation, from all the communities which are on the front lines struggling against harsh and brutal economic conditions.
We can do this. $5 a month from 200 people, $10 a month from a hundred people, $20 dollars a month from fifty people, $50 a month from twenty people - and we would have a thousand more dollars per month. The PT points the direction - it orients our leaders with a class perspective we just can't find anywhere else.
-Cathleen Williams Sacramento
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