jesse chase
Food sovereignty activists protest outside a secret elite corporate seed conference convened by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Organised by Global Justice Now.
Let’s talk about food sovereignty, Africa, the economic impoverishment of the diaspora and Indigenous people at large. How does Africa, the biggest continent on the planet, import 85% of its entire food chain? African countries consist of 27 out of 34 the countries around the world that are unable to feed themselves, according to worldatlas.com. That’s 27 out of Africa’s 54 divided countries. Half the countries of Africa! The countries the world atlas refers to are also heavily involved in conflict or are in post-war devastation. This is all neo-colonial industrial military complex profiteering and resource extraction. Europe still has their hands in there of course. AFRICOM is out here. The Caribbean turns around and imports 83% of their entire food chain after being enslaved for hundreds of years and feeding Europeans. England’s offspring kkkolony corporation, Canada, imports 80% of its fresh produce. That was a $22 billion USD business in 2020.
By comparison the U.S only imports 15% of their food. South America imports half of what the U.S. does. Based on Latin America import export data, total imports of South American countries valued USD 487 million in 2019. Brazil being the top importer and exporter. 80% of the UK’s food is imported. An article from the Pulitzer Center, titled: Food is the First Frontier of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, says “the Israeli occupation has transformed the Palestinian food system, converting it from a producer society to a consumer society, according to multiple West Bank residents”. This is what’s happening everywhere. And education systems around the world generally don’t teach self sustainability, along with the infinite historical lies they teach everyday they also teach dependence upon capitalism. That’s why politically educating ourselves, each other and the people about how we can live apart from capitalism is of most importance to our liberation and the end of this oppressive way of life.
In light of the pandemic indicating the food system is broken, a World Resources Institute (WRI) report states that global food production would have to increase by 50% to feed the world’s 10 billion mouths in 2050, requiring a landmass twice the size of India. The lever is only going to intensify pressure on the people as food scarcity and prices increase. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again because Henry Kissinger’s neoliberal maxim, “Control the oil, control the nation; control the food, control the people” is the ever expanding plan that is really truly fucking us all over across the planet. The food and oil cartels are extorting the planet.
You can tell how much more powerful and influential food companies are becoming by how much they lobby American politicians. In 1992 they lobbied $29 million. In 2020 they funded $170 million. Inflation will keep rising. Food costs and food quality are being controlled by a handful of corporations. Many of the ingredients cause disease.
Resource extraction and impoverishment
AFRICOM has a presence in many of those 27 African nations which are currently unable to “feed themselves”. We can also see where heavy foreign investment often coincides with impoverishment. This isn’t just in Africa but all across North and South America and the rest of the world.
This doesn’t account for 235,000 homeless people in Canada, 500,000+ homeless in USA, and the other 150 million homeless people around the world who no doubt all deal with food insecurity. Those in Yemen being subjected to famine caused by a U.S backed Saudi war. Those countries also being sanctioned by the West, the top countries are Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Myanmar and Cuba. Of the 150 million homeless, 26 million are refugees and half of those refugees are children. And even those with housing live in food deserts, every hood across the world basically. If you live 1km to 1 mile of a grocery store you are considered to be living in a food desert. And I’m not talking corner stores with chips and chocolate bars, actual grocery stores with all the essential foods. Most marginalized urban and rural communities live in neighborhoods designed to be food scarce so that the dollars are spent outside of the community and so that people have less access to healthy food and therefore have more poor health conditions. Northern Indigenous communities in Canada have to pay exorbitant amounts for basic essential foods. Things like fruits and vegetables can be set to sell watermelons at $80.00 or more, and these is pre-pandemic prices. Not to mention the lack of clean drinking water in so many first nation communities too. The government intentionally underfunds infrastructure on the reservations Indigenous people were forced onto so that they would now leave the reservations and assimilate. Israel and South Africa both applied the same “reservation” apartheid system that was first developed by the British use against First Nations people across Turtle Island (North America).
Working Towards Food Sovereignty for Liberation
There should, could and can be sustainable food production facilities in every neighbourhood. Some places it may not be possible. But it is the economy that can be generated in order to operate as funders towards helping our people in Africa and abroad where the diaspora is, or by moving to Africa, by becoming the network, a federation of cooperatives working together to finance nothing less than revolution. We need to be able to target and build specific programs and aid those waging in revolutionary action both locally and internationally.
The instructions on how to manage a socialist community, for the people, by the people, can be found in the book, Jackson Rising. It’s about Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi. They model themselves partly off the Mondragon of Spain, an entire Basque city of worker owned and operated cooperatives independent of the capitalist system. And succinctly put by the AAPRP, we can study Nkrumahism-Toureism which “provides a complete social, political, philosophical and economic theory which constitutes a comprehensive network of principles, beliefs, values, morals and rules which guide our behaviour, determines the form which our institutions and organizations will take; and acts as a cohesive force to bind us together, guide and channel our revolutionary action towards the achievement of Pan-Africanism and the inevitable triumph of socialism worldwide.”
Farming and liberating or taking over land, that is #landback, is the primary objective of freedom and revolution. Whether it be acquiring collective land trusts, buying land or occupying space by any means. Turtle Island isn’t African people’s land, it’s the First Nations land. Their freedom is our freedom! Indigenous people, Black people, Asian people and the Arab people, all historically colonized people around the world can no doubt shake the Earth free from the destructive shackles of capitalism. Europeans too. And look at the Europeans already dropping, Boris Johnson resigned, Italy is in political turmoil with the resignation of their prime minister, former Japanese PM fascist was recently assassinated and the Sri Lankan people raided their President’s house and made him resign. Panama is having massive general strikes. Guatemala set their congress on fire in 2020. The railroad systems in Canada were blocked by First Nations warriors causing millions is corporate loss. Trucker convoys in Canada blocked U.S. border crossings and caused millions of dollars to be lost as well. There have been coups and political organization happening in Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Sudan and Guinea in the past 2 years. The heat is on my people. We can’t let up!
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 