Tag: Farmers

We Are Grass. We Grow on Everything: The Forty-Ninth Newsletter (2020)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Farmers and agricultural workers from northern India marched along various national highways toward India’s capital of New Delhi as part of the general strike on 26 November. They carried placards with slogans against the anti-farmer, pro-corporate laws that were passed by India’s Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) in September, and then pushed through the Rajya Sabha (upper house) with only a voice vote. The striking agricultural workers and farmers carried flags that indicated their affiliation with a range of organisations, from the communist movement to a broad front of farmers’ organisations. They marched against the privatisation of agriculture, which they argue undermines India’s food sovereignty and erodes their ability to remain agriculturalists.

We Are Grass. We Grow on Everything: The Forty-Ninth Newsletter (2020)

250 million people participate in countrywide strike in India

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

250 million people participate in countrywide strike in India

Some of the key demands contained in the 12-point charter put forward by the organizers include withdrawal of a series of laws recently passed by the Modi government repealing key labor and farm price protections, a rollback in the recent disinvestment policies in major government-owned enterprises, implementation of existing welfare schemes for rural workers, and expanding welfare policies to aid the masses affected by the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How FDR Saved Capitalism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

How FDR Saved Capitalism

Franklin Roosevelt succeeded in undercutting the growth of left-wing political movements in the mid-1930s by adopting much of the rhetoric of the left and co-opting many of its leaders.

…

The fact that left-wing parties did not make significant inroads during the Great Depression dramatically demonstrated not only the power of America’s coalitional two-party system to dissuade a national third party but also the deeply antistatist, individualistic character of its electorate.

Related:

Presidential Firepower – How FDR saved capitalism in eight days.

[2019] Trump’s trade wars were supposed to rescue US manufacturing and agriculture. But his policies have made them significantly worse.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Farmers have endured severe losses in Trump’s trade wars. Sales of soybean, pork, wheat, and many other agricultural goods to China are drying up, and the country is turning to alternatives like Brazil and Canada to fill the void.

The loss of export markets creates large hurdles for US farmers trying to re-enter them, according to Matt McAlvanah, the spokesperson for Farmers for Free Trade, a pro-trade advocacy group.

McAlvanah previously told Business Insider: “It’s very difficult to regain markets farmers have spent decades cultivating. These relationships are built over time, they’re built on trust — and when they go away overnight, they don’t come back overnight.
— Read on markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-trade-wars-tried-rescuing-manufacturing-agriculture-worse-off-now-2019-12-1028741598

American Farmers Are in Crisis. Here’s Why

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Smaller farms have found it especially hard to adapt to these changes, which they blame on government policy and a lack of antitrust enforcement. The government is on the side of big farms, they say, and is ambivalent about whether small farms can succeed. “Get big or get out,” Earl Butz, Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, infamously told farmers in the 1970s. It’s a sentiment that Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary under President Trump, echoed recently. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” Perdue said, at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. The number of farms with more than 2,000 acres nearly doubled between 1987 and 2012, according to USDA data. The number of farms with 200 to 999 acres fell over that time period by 44 percent.
— Read on time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/