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Capitalism and the Fabrication of Food Insecurity
Human security can be depicted as the notion through which the widespread and cross-cutting challenges to the survival, livelihood and dignity of individuals can be identified and protected. In simpler words, folks are protected against threats and situations that deem to violate their vital human rights. Thus, with human security, the protection and empowerment of people is promoted. With that said, under the umbrella of human security, food security holds immense significance; as, it is responsible for sustaining human life and health. In addition to that, it also stipulates individuals on the required energy for progression, resulting in the evolution of state institutions and its functioning. Henceforth, food security has a direct co-relation with the development of a state.
Notwithstanding, the lack of access to sufficient quality of affordable food results in food insecurity, which can be depicted in several states and communities across the globe. However, contrary to popular belief,this food insecurity is not a subsequent of scarcity; in fact, the annual production of food surpasses the benchmark of sustaining one and a half times more food for the world’s entire population. In reality, the scarcity narrative was produced by corporate food regimes to serve their interests through capitalism. Since, it can result in the incorporation of price increase and generation of maximum profit, indicating how the agricultural sector is influenced by the interests of elite companies. In fact, the top eight firms in agriculture hold 80% of the sector’s market share, and these particular institutions dictate the conditions and rules for our food system, while effectively setting the price of grain for the world subsequent to their benefits. As a result, several regions of the world experience food insecurity, which essentially tarnishes their road to progression.
Through capitalism, food has transformed from a necessity into a commodity, solely for the purpose of profiting from its high demand. This denotes the horrors of capitalism; because, profits are given priority over human needs. Due to this lust for profit, corporate food regimes initiated the “Green Revolution” in the 1950s and 1960s. On the surface level, the movement consisted of the development of new disease-resistant strains of food crops, primarily wheat and rice. The incentive was to increase crop yield in the developing world, through countries such as India and Mexico. Nevertheless, beneath the surface, this movement led to an increase in food insecurity and served the interests of the elite. The green revolution led to the introduction of subsistence farming systems, in the form of new technology. However, in order to adapt to this system, farmers required cash to buy seeds, fertilizers and equipment, along with the continuous supply of cash to maintain them. Meaning, the farmers could not rely on eating their own produce and selling the surplus. Instead, crops had to be traded with agricultural corporations, in order to continue to earn a living through farming. Thus, the green revolution did not lead to improving small-scale farmer productivity. In fact, it monopolized the agricultural sector and consolidated the profit in the hands of specific transnational corporations. The companies in turn influenced the agricultural market to their benefit, leading to food insecurity.
Furthermore, food insecurity is a result of the systematic failure of capitalism. One of the ways to attain maximum wealth for agricultural corporations and their shareholders, is through over production. Hence, these companies set a fix price for the farmers cost. In this manner, farmers cannot produce less crops despite declines in agricultural markets. As a result, crops are over produced and their market price declines. In order to cover the fixed costs, the farmers have to carry out more production, which puts them in perpetual debt. In addition, with over production, goods pile up unsold, workers are laid off, demand drops and prices of products increases, resulting in lack of access for poor people.
A country fighting against the influence of the corporate food regime is India; as, Indian farmers in Punjab and Haryana have carried out mass protests recently. Reason being that the Indian Parliament has passed three agriculture acts—Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. Since Modi’s regime favors the interests of the elites and the corporate regimes, these laws have made farmers of India vulnerable to exploitation and the prevalence of food insecurity. Firstly, the laws aim to remove the agricultural produce market committee (APMC), which is the area that regulates the notified agricultural produce and livestock. Through the APMC, traders were provided with licenses and a minimum support price for crops was set. As a result, corporations could not dominate the agricultural sector; however, the new laws challenge that very concept. Even though the Indian government has argued the changes will give farmers additional freedom, the farmers claim that the new legislation shall eliminate the safeguards set to shield them against corporate takeovers and exploitation. Therefore, the monopolization of corporate regimes in the Indian food system shall further devastate the livelihoods of vulnerable communities, and the food insecurity will prevail.
As a solution to food insecurity arising from capitalism, a reappearance in the pre-capitalistic reality should occur, where food is not bought and sold to the highest bidder. Instead, food is sold outside exclusive markets as a basic right of all citizens of a state. This system can be regarded as the system of communal responsibility. The success of which can be traced back to the era of empires, where individuals did not experience food insecurity despite the rise and fall of empires. Proving how, co-operative production and fair distribution of food is possible. Hence, in conclusion, food insecurity is a fabrication of capitalism and the interests of corporations; where, wealth is saturated in the elite class. Accordingly, the solution is to return to the pre-capitalist reality and focus on communal responsibility.
Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of Naval Operations, rebuffed pointed interrogations by GOP lawmakers who grilled him over his decision to recommend sailors read a book deemed by some conservatives as anti-American.
The U.S. Navy’s top admiral also defended moves to address and root out racism and extremism in the forces as well as its efforts to bolster inclusion and diversity, which have prompted criticism from some conservatives and Republican lawmakers.
“Do you personally consider advocating for the destruction of American capitalism to be extremist?” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., asked Gilday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, referring to a passage from Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist,” which argues capitalism and racism are interlinked.
Banks continued to interrogate the admiral over specific quotes from Kendi’s book, which was a No. 1 New York Times best seller in 2020, and statements he had made elsewhere in the past.
Visibly distraught, Gilday fired back:
“I am not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody’s book,” he said. “This is a bigger issue than Kendi’s book. What this is really about is trying to paint the United States military, and the United States Navy, as weak, as woke.”
He added that sailors had spent 341 days at sea last year with minimal port visits — the longest deployments the Navy has done, he said.
“We are not weak. We are strong,” Gilday said.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., also challenged the admiral by citing specific quotes from the book and asked him how those ideas laid out by Kendi would further advance or improve the Navy’s power.
Gilday responded by arguing the importance of transparency and open dialogue about racism.
“There is racism in the Navy just as there is racism in our country, and the way we are going to get out of it is by being honest and not to sweep it under the rug,” he expounded, adding that he does not agree with everything the author says in the book.
The key point however, he said, is for sailors “to be able to think critically.”
The exchange was the latest in vociferous complaints from some conservative leaders and lawmakers who suggest the armed forces are becoming a pawn for the country’s culture wars and “wokeness” ideology, as the military takes steps to address issues of racial inclusion, extremism, racism and white supremacy.
And only last week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., accosted Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about Kendi’s book, which Cotton said promoted “critical race theories” at a different Senate Armed Services Committee hearing where Austin was testifying.
Days earlier, Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas — two combat veterans — launched a “whistleblowers” online platform to report examples of “woke ideology” in the military.
“Enough is enough. We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology,” Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, said in a tweet.
Also in February, Austin instructed a one-day stand-down across the Defense Department pausing regular activities to address extremism and white nationalism in the ranks — an issue Austin declared as a priority after a number of rioters at the U.S. Capitol in January were found to have military backgrounds.
The stand down completed in April was an effort to better understand the scope of the problem of extremism in the ranks, Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby said in a briefing then.
Earlier, Austin had revoked a ban on diversity training for the military.
More recently, in May, a U.S. Army animated ad focused on soldier diversity — featuring the real story of a soldier who enlisted after being raised by two mothers in California — drew criticism and political backlash from some conservative lawmakers.
“Holy crap,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a tweet. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea. . . .”
Cruz was referring to a TikTok video that compared the U.S. Army ad with a Russia campaign that showed buff soldiers doing push-ups and leaping out of airplanes, adding that the contrast made the American soldiers “into pansies.”
The confrontation Tuesday is also the latest in reproaches by Rep. Banks, who is a Naval Reserve officer, and other GOP members over Gilday’s recommendation to include Kendi’s book in the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program.
In February, Banks sent a letter to Gilday arguing that the views promoted in the book are “explicitly anti-American” and demanded Gilday explain the Navy’s decision to include it on the reading list or remove it.
Gilday responded to Banks in a letter obtained by Fox News saying that the book was included on the list because “it evokes the author’s own personal journey in understanding barriers to true inclusion, the deep nuances of racism and racial inequalities.”
Lamborn and Rep. Vicky Hartzler, D-Mo., also wrote a letter to the admiral to convey their concern about the inclusion of Kendi’s book as well as Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” and Jason Pierceson’s “Sexual Minorities and Politics.”
The GOP lawmakers argued the books “reinforce a view that America is a confederation of identity categories of the oppressed and their oppressors rather than a common homeland of individual citizens who are united by common purposes,“ Lamborn and Hartzler wrote, according to Fox News.
Our understanding of events refines with time. New developments reframe the issues, and prompt reassessment of the solutions applied, their design and outcomes. What does looking back on the 1991 reforms in 2021 tell us?
For three decades, India celebrated and criticised the 1991 reforms. The reformers of 1991 say that the idea wasn’t only to tide over a Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis; the changes they brought in went beyond the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) conditionalities for the bailout. The reforms, they insist, were ‘home-grown’. In the years leading up to 1991, technocrats in government had been thinking and writing about how India’s economic policies had been blocking the country’s rise to potential and the structural changes needed. If the broad range of reforms—including tearing down the industrial license permit raj, an exchange rate correction, and liberalising foreign direct investment and trade policies—could be launched within a matter of days of a new government joining office, they argue, it is because the blueprints were ready, waiting for the go-ahead from the political leadership.
The reformers of 1991 say that the idea wasn’t only to tide over a Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis; the changes they brought in went beyond the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) conditionalities for the bailout.
At least two well-regarded technocrats that were important in the 1991 reforms disagree—publicly and in off-the-record conversations. In a media interview last month, one of them, the economic adviser in the reforms team, Dr Ashok Desai, suggested that if there were any reformers in government before the IMF “forced” India to liberalise in 1991, “they hid themselves very well”. According to him, after the BOP crisis was resolved, finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh turned “dead against reforms”.
The multiple versions of the reforms story make it difficult to separate fact from romance. It cannot be disputed, though, that the 1991 BOP crisis was a turning point for the economy. India had tided over BOP crises earlier with loans from the IMF, repaid them prematurely, and avoided going through with the bailout’s conditionalities. 1991 was singularly different because India was on the brink of default, which is likely to have forced politicians to set politics aside and listen to technocrats. Any default on external obligations would have meant hurting India’s credibility grievously and an inescapable sense of national shame. The government probably took the view that there was no choice other than to take corrective steps. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao named Dr Manmohan Singh, who had been a technocrat in government and was well regarded in global policy circles, as his finance minister. Dr Singh clearly had the Prime Minister’s, his party’s and the IMF’s trust. Records irrefutably show that the Congress party’s acceptance of the reversals in the interventionist economic policies of the first four post-Independence decades was not secured by the Prime Minister. He had delegated the task of tackling doubts and resistance within the party to his ministers, in particular, the finance minister and the commerce minister, and an aide in his office. The finance minister defended the reforms on the floor of the house in Parliament.
National Public Radio (NPR) ignited a social media firestorm Thursday night over a tweet that appears to mock capitalism, despite taxpayer dollars accounting for much of the organization’s annual budget.
The outlet posted a story titled “And Now, Crocs With Stiletto Heels” that explores a curious new collaboration between luxury fashion brand Balenciaga and Crocs, the rubber slipper company responsible for fashion faux pas among the millions of comfort-clinging owners nationwide.
The caption accompanying the article, which was written in both uppercase and lowercase letters, appears to mock the collaboration: “CaPitAliSm bReEds InNovAtiOn,” it reads.
The tweet’s language sparked outrage on social media, with figures like conservative Tim Young calling out the irony in NPR’s three-word post.
“You wouldn’t exist without capitalism, clown who is tweeting on behalf of NPR,” he wrote.
“Job at public news station wouldn’t exist wo capitalism,” another user echoed. “Are you guys ok?”
“Our tax money shouldn’t pay for this,” one person expressed.
“It’s still a hell of a lot better than communism at breeding innovation, even if some of the products are silly,” one woman fired back.
