#Farmers producer organisation

[fpotci01]

Key Enablers Driving the Growth of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) in India

Agriculture is the backbone of India's economy, employing nearly half of the country's workforce. Despite this, small and marginal farmers often face challenges such as low productivity, limited market access, and insufficient bargaining power. To address these issues, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) have emerged as powerful tools, enabling farmers to pool their resources, increase their income, and improve their livelihoods.

In recent years, the Indian government and various organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and NABARD, have actively promoted FPOs and FPCs, recognizing them as key drivers of rural development. This blog will explore the key enablers behind the growth of FPOs and FPCs in India and how these organizations are transforming the agricultural landscape.

What are FPOs and FPCs?

An FPO is a collective group of farmers that comes together to enhance their income through better access to inputs, technology, and markets. It operates much like a cooperative, but it is more business-oriented and focuses on improving the overall efficiency of farming operations. An FPC is a type of FPO registered as a company under the Companies Act, providing farmers with a legal identity and enabling them to operate more formally in the marketplace.

Both FPOs and FPCs allow farmers to work collectively, improving their negotiating power and providing them with access to essential services like credit, storage, and processing. These organizations are key in reducing the fragmentation of small farms, enabling farmers to operate on a larger scale and benefit from economies of scale.

Key Enablers Driving the Growth of FPOs and FPCs

1. Government Support and Policies

One of the most significant enablers behind the growth of FPOs and FPCs in India is government support. The Indian government has introduced several policies and initiatives aimed at promoting FPOs, recognizing their potential to improve rural livelihoods and enhance agricultural productivity. The launch of the NABARD FPO Portal and schemes like the Formation and Promotion of 10,000 FPOs have provided the necessary financial and technical support for FPOs to thrive.

NABARD FPO Portal: This platform serves as a resource hub for FPOs, offering guidance on registration, governance, and business development. It also provides access to funding and credit, helping FPOs overcome the financial barriers that many small farmers face.

Financial Assistance: The government has introduced several funding schemes that provide grants and subsidies to FPOs and FPCs. This financial assistance helps farmers cover initial setup costs, invest in new technologies, and develop infrastructure like warehouses and cold storage facilities.

Ease of Registration: The government has simplified the process of FPO agriculture registration, making it easier for farmers to form FPOs and FPCs. With platforms like the FPO Hub and FPO Platform for India, farmers can easily access information on how to register and the benefits of doing so.

2. Access to Technology and Data Platforms

The advent of digital technology has been a game-changer for FPOs and FPCs, providing them with tools to improve farm productivity, manage resources more efficiently, and connect with markets. The rise of interactive data platforms allows farmers to access real-time information on weather conditions, market prices, and best practices in farming.

FPO Platform for India: This digital platform connects FPOs across the country, enabling them to share resources, collaborate, and learn from each other. It also offers market insights, helping farmers make informed decisions about when and where to sell their produce for the best prices.

Digital Tools: FPOs now have access to mobile applications and software that assist in farm management, pest control, and soil testing. These tools empower farmers to make data-driven decisions, leading to higher yields and better crop quality.

Market Linkages: Platforms like the FPO Hub and FPO Platform help bridge the gap between farmers and markets, allowing FPOs to negotiate better prices for their produce. By removing middlemen, these platforms ensure that farmers receive a fair share of the market value.

3. Capacity Building and Training

One of the challenges small farmers face is a lack of knowledge about modern farming practices and business management. FPOs and FPCs have played a crucial role in addressing this gap by offering training and capacity-building programs. Through workshops, seminars, and on-the-ground support, farmers learn how to improve productivity, reduce costs, and manage their organizations effectively.

Skill Development: FPOs and FPCs provide training on various aspects of agriculture, including crop planning, water management, and post-harvest handling. This helps farmers adopt modern practices that enhance their efficiency and sustainability.

Business Management: Running an FPO or FPC requires strong business acumen. These organizations offer training on financial management, marketing, and governance, equipping farmers with the skills needed to succeed in a competitive market.

Collective Bargaining: One of the biggest advantages of FPOs and FPCs is their ability to negotiate better deals with suppliers and buyers. Through capacity-building programs, farmers learn how to leverage their collective strength to secure favorable terms for inputs like seeds, fertilizers, and machinery, as well as better prices for their produce.

4. Market Access and Value Addition

FPOs and FPCs have significantly improved farmers' access to markets, both domestic and international. By pooling their resources and working collectively, these organizations can engage in value-added activities such as processing, packaging, and branding, which enhances the marketability of their products.

Value Addition: FPOs can invest in infrastructure like processing units and packaging facilities, enabling them to add value to their raw produce. For example, instead of selling raw tomatoes, an FPO might process them into tomato paste, which can be sold at a higher price.

Direct Market Access: Through platforms like the FPO Hub, FPOs can bypass traditional middlemen and sell their products directly to consumers, retailers, and wholesalers. This ensures that farmers receive a higher share of the market price, improving their income.

Export Opportunities: With better access to international markets, FPOs can explore export opportunities, particularly for organic and specialty products. This not only increases the income of farmers but also opens up new avenues for growth.

5. Farmer Cooperatives and Peer Learning

Collaboration and peer learning are crucial enablers of the success of FPOs and FPCs. Farmer cooperatives in India have a long history of fostering solidarity and collective action among small farmers. FPOs build on this tradition by creating platforms where farmers can share knowledge, resources, and experiences.

Farmer Cooperative India: The cooperative model in India has been instrumental in promoting collective action among farmers. FPOs, which operate on similar principles, benefit from the long-established culture of cooperation and trust among farmers.

Peer Learning Networks: FPOs provide a platform for farmers to learn from one another, exchange best practices, and collaborate on joint ventures. These networks are particularly valuable in helping farmers stay updated on the latest developments in agriculture and market trends.

Conclusion: The Future of FPOs and FPCs in India

The growth of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) in India has been driven by a combination of government support, access to technology, capacity building, market linkages, and farmer cooperation. These organizations have empowered small and marginal farmers, enabling them to overcome challenges and improve their livelihoods.

As India continues to modernize its agricultural sector, FPOs and FPCs will play an increasingly important role in driving rural development and enhancing food security. With the right support and resources, these organizations can transform the future of Indian agriculture, ensuring that farmers not only survive but thrive in the years to come.

By leveraging platforms like the FPO Hub and the FPO Platform for India, and tapping into the benefits of collective action, FPOs and FPCs can continue to grow and make a lasting impact on the lives of farmers across the country. For more information, visit: https://fpo.tci.cornell.edu/

[agreads]

India prepares for AI-powered grain assessment at scale

India’s premier Agriculture research organisation, the Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) have selected Grain Analyser , through the highly competitive Pusa Krishi program to bring phone-based AI grain quality assessment developed by GoMicro to 20 farmer-producer organisations (FPOs) nationwide. India’s agricultural exports reached USD…

[opencommunion]

"Like all foreigners, the Jewish settlers sailed first to Alexandria, took a ferry to Jaffa, and were taken ashore by small boats. This mundane arrival at the shore appears in the settlers’ statements as aggressive and alien treatment: ‘Aravim Hetikifu Ottanu’ – ‘the Arabs assaulted us’ – is the phrase used to describe the simple act of Palestinian boys helping settlers to small boats on the way to Jaffa; they shouted because the waves were high and asked for baksheesh [tips] because this was how they managed to live. But in the settlers’ narrative they were assailants. Noise, presumably a normal feature of life in the Jewish townships of Eastern Europe, becomes menacing when produced by Palestinian women wailing in the traditional salute of joy to the sailors returning safely home. For the settlers this was the behaviour of savages, ‘with fiery eyes and a strange garroted language.’ Whether the topic is their language, their dress or their animals, reports back to Europe concerning the Palestinians were all about unpleasantness and weirdness. ... Again and again, Zionist settlers behaved as a people who had been insulted – either objectively in the form of a physical attack, but more often simply by the very presence of Palestinians in Palestine. ... The Zionist settlers instituted retaliation for ‘theft’, which was how they characterised the rural tradition of cultivating state land, a practice that was legal under Ottoman law. Picking fruit from roadside orchards became an act of robbery only after Zionism took over the land. The words shoded (robber) and rozeach (murderer) were flung about with ease when Palestinians involved in such acts were described. After 1948 these terms would be replaced with ‘terrorist’ and ‘saboteur’. ... Cleansing the land of its farmers and tenants was done at first through meeting in the Zionist madafa and then by force of eviction in Mandatory times. The ‘good’ Palestinians were those who came to the madafa and allowed themselves to be evicted. Those who refused were branded robbers and murderers. Even Palestinians with whom the settlers sometimes shared ownership of horses or long hours of guard duty were transformed into villains once they refused eviction. Later on, wherever Israelis would control the lives of Palestinians, such a refusal to collaborate would be the ultimate proof for Palestinian choice of the terrorist option as a way of life. ... Following the 1967 war ... both Israeli academics and Israeli media commonly used the term ‘terrorism’ when referring to any kind of Palestinian political, social and cultural activity. ‘Palestinian terrorism’ was depicted as having been present from the very beginning of the Zionist project in Palestine and still being there when academic research into it began in earnest. This characterisation was so comprehensive and airtight that it assigned almost every chapter in Palestinian history to the domain of ‘terrorism’ and absolved hardly any of the organisations and personalities that made up the Palestinian national movement from the accusation of being terrorists."

Ilan Pappé, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (2014)

[invisibleicewands]

Please come and see me because I’ll be dead soon’: how Michael Sheen got sucked into a forever chemicals exposé

An opera-loving member of high society turned eco-activist who was forced into police protection with a panic button round his neck. A Hollywood actor who recorded said activist’s life story as he was dying from exposure to the very chemicals he was investigating. Throw in two investigative journalists who realise not everything is as it seems, then uncover some startling truths, and you have “podcasting’s strangest team” on Buried: The Last Witness.

On their award-winning 2023 podcast Buried, the husband and wife duo Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor dug into illegal toxic waste dumping in the UK and its links to organised crime. This time, they focus on “forever chemicals”, specifically polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and set out to discover whether one whistleblower may have been decades ahead of his time in reporting on their harmful impact.

“It’s amazing how big the scale of this story is,” says Ashby, as we sit backstage at the Crucible theatre, where they are doing a live discussion as part of Sheffield DocFest. “With this series, we don’t just want it to make your blood turn cold, we want it to make you question your own blood itself.”

It all started when Taylor and Ashby were sent a lead about the work of former farmer’s representative Douglas Gowan. In 1967, he discovered a deformed calf in a field and began to investigate strange goings on with animals close to the Brofiscin and Maendy quarries in south Wales. He linked them to the dumping of waste by companies including the nearby Monsanto chemical plant, which was producing PCBs.

PCBs were used in products such as paint and paper to act as a fire retardant, but they were discovered to be harmful and have been banned since 1981 in the UK. However, due to their inability to break down – hence the term forever chemical – Gowan predicted their legacy would be a troubling one. “I expect there to be a raft of chronic illness,” he said. He even claimed that his own exposure to PCBs (a result of years of testing polluted grounds) led his pancreas and immune system to stop working. “I’m a mess and I think it can all be attributed to PCBs,” he said.

However, Gowan wasn’t a typical environmentalist. “A blue-blood high-society Tory and a trained lawyer who could out-Mozart anyone,” is how Taylor describes him in the series. He would even borrow helicopters from friends in high places to travel to investigate farmers’ fields. Gowan died in 2018 but the pair managed to get hold of his life’s work – confidential reports, testing and years of evidence. “I’m interested in environmental heroes that aren’t cliche,” says Ashby. “So I was fascinated by him. But then we started to see his flaws and really had to weigh them up. My goodness it’s a murky world we went into.”

The reason they were able to delve even deeper into this murky world is because of the award-winning actor Michael Sheen who, in 2017, came across Gowan’s work in a story he read. He was so blown away by it, and the lack of broader coverage, that he tracked him down. “I got a message back from him saying: ‘Please come and see me because I’ll be dead soon,’” says Sheen. “I took a camera with me and spent a couple of days with him and just heard this extraordinary story.”

What Gowan had been trying to prove for years gained some traction in 2007, with pieces in the Ecologist and a Guardian article exploring how “Monsanto helped to create one of the most contaminated sites in Britain”. One was described as smelling “of sick when it rains and the small brook that flows from it gushes a vivid orange.” But then momentum stalled.

Years later, in 2023, Ashby and Taylor stumbled on a recording of Sheen giving the 2017 Raymond Williams memorial lecture, which referenced Gowan and his work. Before they knew it, they were in the actor’s kitchen drinking tea and learning he had conducted a life-spanning seven-hour interview with Gowan before his death. So they joined forces. Sheen isn’t just a token celebrity name added for clout on this podcast; he is invested. For him, it’s personal as well as political. “Once you dig into it, you realise there’s a pattern,” he says. “All the places where this seems to have happened are poor working-class areas. There’s a sense that areas like the one I come from are being exploited.”

Sheen even goes to visit some contaminated sites in the series, coming away from one feeling sick. “That made it very real,” he says. “To be looking into a field and going: ‘Well, I’m pretty sure that’s toxic waste.’” Sheen was living a double life of sorts. “I went to rehearsals for a play on Monday and people were like, ‘What did you do this weekend?’” he says. “‘Oh, I went to the most contaminated area in the UK and I think I may be poisoned.’ People thought I was joking.” Sheen ended up being OK, but did have some temporary headaches and nausea, which was a worry. “We literally had to work out if we had poisoned Michael Sheen,” says Ashby, who also ponders in the series: “Have I just killed a national treasure?”

The story gets even knottier. Gowan’s findings turn out to be accurate and prescient, but the narrative around his journey gets muddy. As a character with a flair for drama, he turned his investigation into a juicy, riveting story filled with action, which could not always be corroborated. “If he hadn’t done that, and if he’d been a nerdy, analytical, detail-oriented person who just presented the scientific reports and kept them neatly filed, would we have made this podcast?” asks Taylor, which is a fascinating question that runs through this excellent and gripping series.

Ashby feels that Gowan understood how vital storytelling is when it comes to cutting through the noise. “We have so much science proving the scale of these problems we face and yet we don’t seem to have the stories,” he says. “I think Douglas got that. Fundamentally, he understood that stories motivate human beings to act. But then he went too far.”

However, this is not purely about Gowan’s story – it’s about evidence. The Last Witness doubles up as a groundbreaking investigation into the long-lasting impact of PCBs. “We threw the kitchen sink at this,” says Ashby. “The breakthrough for us is that the Royal Society of Chemistry came on board and funded incredibly expensive testing. So we have this commitment to go after the truth in a way that is hardly ever done.”

From shop-bought fish so toxic that it breaches official health advice to off-the-scale levels of banned chemicals found in British soil, the results are staggering. “The scientist almost fell off his chair,” says Ashby. “That reading is the highest he has ever recorded in soil – in the world. That was the moment we knew Douglas was right and we are now realising the scale of this problem. The public doesn’t realise that even a chemical that has been banned for 40 years is still really present in our environment.”

To go even deeper into just how far PCBs have got into our environment and food chain, Ashby and Taylor had their own blood tested. When Taylor found 80 different types of toxic PCB chemicals in her blood it was a sobering moment. “I was genuinely emotional because it’s so personal,” she says. “It was the thought of this thing being in me that was banned before I was even born and the thought of passing that on to my children.” Ashby adds: “We’ve managed physical risk in our life as journalists in Tanzania and with organised crime, but more scary than a gangster is this invisible threat to our health.”

In order to gauge the magnitude of what overexposure to PCBs can do, they headed to Anniston, Alabama, once home to a Monsanto factory. “As a journalist, you have an inbuilt scepticism and think it can’t be that bad,” says Ashby. “But when I got there I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I hate to use words like dystopian, but it was. There is a whole massive school that can’t be used. There’s illnesses in children and cancers. It truly was the most powerful vignette of the worst-case example of these chemicals.”

It’s bleak stuff but instilling fear and panic is not the intention. “Obviously, we’re really concerned about it,” says Ashby. “And although the environmental crises we face do feel overwhelming, it is incredible how a movement has formed and how individuals are taking action in communities. The lesson to take from Douglas is that the response doesn’t have to be resignation. It can be agency.”

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 17 March 1846, Saint Patrick's Day, one of the first shipments of famine refugees left Dublin for New York. During the next five years more than a million people followed, driven by hunger to Canada or the United States. Élisée Reclus, the great French geographer, anarchist, vegetarian, and naturist, who arrived in Ireland at the end of the famine, noted that “Within a few miles of the wealthiest island in the world there live the most wretched human beings in Europe” and observed that “In no other country has famine committed such ravages as on the fertile soil of Ireland.” Known as the Great Famine, the Great Hunger, or an Drochshaol in Irish, like most famines the human cost was largely man-made. It killed a million people and forced a similar number to emigrate, while vast quantities of food produced in Ireland was exported to Britain for profit. In the decades preceding the famine, agricultural labourers and tenant farmers had staged numerous violent revolts. They had suffered successive famines throughout the 19th-century, and in 1841 almost half the homes in Ireland were single-room mud cabins. They fought these miserable conditions through secret societies known to history as “Whiteboy” groups. Members of these secret organisations were bound by elaborate oaths and rituals. They demanded lower rents and tithes, increased wages, and fairer land distribution, and they pressed their claims with property destruction, animal mutilation, assault, and even murder. More information and sources: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8902/first-famine-refugees-depart-dublin-on-st-patrick%E2%80%99s-day-1846 Pictured: a famine memorial in Dublin https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2232084273643377/?type=3

[gemsofgreece]

The Greek islands in the 50s through the lens of Robert McGabe

Katápola, Amorgós, 1960. Boat full of grapes arrives at the port. Due to the absence of good roads at the time, sometimes the boats were used for transfers even to different places of the same island.

Mýkonos, 1955. Fishermen take their nets out at dawn to dry and fix them. In the background one can spot Hotel Leto, one of the two first hotels built by EOT (Greek Organisation of Tourism) in Greece.

Sérifos. Windy meeting at the Chora´s fountain.

Naxos, 1957.

Mýkonos, 1957. Serious negotiation between a farmer who brought his produce to the Chora with his donkey and the shop owner Asimina Kousathana. Note the stand with the card postals in the background.

Linariá, Skyros 1957. Women wait at the harbour for ships to bring freshwater. Many Greek islands suffer from water scarcity to this day.

In Santorini, Father Nikolaos Kokkalakis founded the school of carpet making in order to create job opportunities for the local young women and keep them in the island.

Girl fills her tinplate with water while smiling at the camera. Mýkonos 1957.

A woman knitting stares back at the camera, Skyros 1957.

Original article in Greek and with more photos here.

[sourcreammachine]

GREEN PARTY MANIFESTO 2024 SUMMARY

tldr: there's a feeling of tension in this manifesto, between youthful zennial climatic ecosocialism and old-guard hippy-liberal environmentalism. this year the greens may well go from 1 MP to the dizzying heights of 2 (there's whispers on the wind that they may even get 3...), and the green council delegation is at 800-odd now, so this could easily be a changing-of-the-guard moment

with the great Berry and the ok Denyer in parliament the party could have more momentum in battling the starmerite government, and with that, it has the ability, the possibility to pick up more momentum. this is a big opportunity in the party's history - over the next five years it can and could be pushed into a holistic ecosocialist movement by the centrally influential mass party membership, and remove the last dregs of its tunnel vision to provide a lefty movement for everyone, green and pink, a Newfoundland coalition. with votes at 16 on the cards and this potential evolution of the party, 2029 could be a big moment for this country's left. whether or not the greens play the role of keystone is up to them

it is also the only manifesto to use the term 'neurodivergent'

💷ECONOMY

wealth tax of 1% on individuals with assets over §10m and 2% for assets over §1b (an extremely humble proposal), reform capital gains and investment dividend taxation to be at the same rates as income taxation, remove the income-based bands on national insurance contributions, ie raising total income taxation by 8% at §50k/a, – altogether raising government revenues by upwards of §70b/a

stratify VAT to reduce it for consumer stuff and hike it for stuff like financial services

permanent windfall tax on banks for whenever they get windfalls

perform a holistic land survey to get the data needed for a new, effective Land Tax

abolish the tax relief on existing freeports and SEZs

heavy carbon tax to raise a boatload of billions, rising progressively over a decade to allow industrial adaptation, for a ~§80b state windfall for five years that'll be for green investment as this windfall starts to recede

renationalise water and energy

§15 minimum wage, 10:1 pay ratio for all organisations public and private (ie §150 sort-of maximum wage, ~§300k/a), mandatory equal pay audits, 'support' lower hours and four-day weeks [clarification needed]

unambiguously define gig workers as workers with contract rights from day one, repeat offenders of gig-slavery will be banned from operating in the country

every City bank required to produce a strategy with a clear pathway to divestment of all fossil fuels "as soon as possible and at least by 2030", every City non-banking organisation simply to be banned from having fossil fuel in their portfolios, credit to be banned for repeat City climate offenders, mandate the BoE to fulfil the funding of the climate transition and climate leadership of the City, FCA to develop measures to ban fossil fuel share trading in the City and immediately prohibit all new shares in fossil fuels

"we will explore legal ways for companies to be transformed into mutual organisations"😈

develop regional cooperative banks to invest in regional SMEs, coops and community enterprises

diversify crop growth, promote local agricultural cooperatives and peripheral urban horticultural farms, give farmers a sort of collective bargain against grocers

aim towards a circular economy: require ten-year warranties on white goods, rollout of right-to-repair

tighten monopoly laws on media with a hard cap preventing >20% of a media market being owned by one individual or company and implement Leveson 2

🏥PUBLIC SERVICES

abolish tuition fees and cancel standing debt

surge nhs funding by §30B, triple labour's spending plans for everything, the entire budget, the entire state, everything

free personal care, with occupational therapy being part of this

35h/w free child care (eg seven hours over five days, or seven days of five hours)

renationalise many academies under local authorities, abolish the "charity" status of private schools and charge VAT

surge funding for smoking-cessation, addiction support and sexual health service

surge funding for public dentistry with free care for children and low-earners

free school breakfasts in primary school and free school lunches for all schools

one-month guarantee of access to mental health therapies

online access to PrEP

let school playing fields be used in the evenings by local sports clubs

greater funding for civic sports facilities and pools

🏠HOUSING

unambiguously-under-the-law nationalise the crown estate for an absolute fuckton of land and assets for housing and for green energy and rewilding for FREE

rent control for local authorities, ban no-fault evictions and introduce long-term leases, create private tenancy boards of tenants

local authorities to have right of first refusal on the purchase of certain properties at aggressive rates, such as unoccupied or uninsulated buildings

all new homes to be Passivhaus standard with mandatory solar panels and heat pumps

§30B across five years to insulate homes, §12B of which is for social homes, and §9B more for heat pumps, and §7B more for summer cooling

planning law reform: council planning mechanisms to priorities little developments all over the place rather than sprawling blobs, demolitions to require as thorough a planning application as erections, new developments required to not be car dependent

planning laws to require large-scale developments feature access to key community infrastructures such as transport, health and education, often mandating the construction of new key infrastructures, support nightlife and local culture in planning regulations

exempt pubs and local cultural events from VAT

building materials to be reusable, builders' waste rates to be surged to encourage use of reuse

750k new social homes in five years

🚄TRANSPORT

'a bus service to every village', restore local authority control and/or ownership of their busses

renationalise rail via franchise-concession lapsing, slowly assume ownership of the rolling stock (currently leased, and would continue to be so under labour's implementation of renationalisation) by buying a new train when the stock needs to be replaced

electrification agenda across the rail network, strategic approach to rail line and station reopenings

bring forward (sorta, the tories suspended it but labour says they'll reinstate it) the new petrol car ban from 2030 to 2027, existing petrol cars targeted to be off the road by 2034, investigate road-price charges as a replacement for petrol tax, hike road tax proportionally to vehicle weight, drop urban speed limits from 50kph to 30kph (or from 30mph to 20mph if you only speak Wrong), mass funding for freightrail and support logistics firms transitioning away from lorries

§2.5b/a for footpaths and cycleways, target of 50% of urban journeys to be extravehicular by 2030

frequent-flyer levy, ban on domestic flights within three-hour rail distance, remove the exemption of airline fuel from fuel tax, prioritise training of airline workers into other transportational jobs

👮FORCE

abolish the home office, transfer its police/security portfolio to the justice ministry and its citizenship/migration portfolio to a new migration ministry separate from the criminal justice system

abolish the kill the bill bill and restore the right to protest

recognise palestine, push for immediate ceasefire and prosecution of war crimes, back the south africa case, "[support] an urgent international effort to end the illegal occupation of palestinian land"

grant asylum-seekers the right to work before their application is granted

end the hostile environment

abolish Prevent

end routine stop-and-search and facial recognition

commission to reform 'counterproductive' drug regime, decriminalise personal possession

amend the Online Safety Act to "[protect] political debate from being manipulated by falsehoods, fakes and half-truths", ie actually protecting 'fReE sPeEcH' and not everything that rightists imply by that phrase

decriminalise sex work

reform laws to give artists IP protections against ai

cancel trident and disarm

push for nato reforms (in its and our interest, they're not russophiles, they're not galloway, it's ok): get it to adopt a no-first-use nuclear policy, get it to prioritise diplomatic action first rather than military reaction, get it to adopt a stronger line on only acting for the defence of its member states

right to roam🚶‍♂️

🌱CLIMATE

zero-carbon by 2040, rather than the ephemeral ostensible government target of 2050

stop all new oil/gas licenses, end all subsidy for oil/gas industries, regulate biofuels to end greenwashing, end subsidies for biomass

decarbonise energy by 2030, minimum threshold of energy infrastructures to be community owned, "end the de facto ban on onshore wind" with planning reform

massively expand the connections between the insular grid and the UCTE continental grid to increase electricity import and export and prevent the need for energy autarky

more targeted bans on single-use plastics

"give nature a legal personhood" ok grandma let’s get you to bed

§2b/a to local authorities for local small-business decarbonisation

"cease development of new nuclear power stations, as nuclear energy is much more expensive and slower to develop than renewables. we are clear that nuclear is a distraction from developing renewable energy and the risk to nuclear power stations from extreme climate events is rising fast. nuclear power stations carry an unacceptable risk for the communities living close to facilities and create unmanageable quantities of radioactive waste. they are also inextricably linked with the production of nuclear weapons. green MPs will campaign to phase out existing nuclear power stations." because some people just can't let go of the seventies. nuclear is good. nuclear is our friend

invest in r&d to find solutions to decarbonise 'residual' carbon in the economy, such as HGVs or mobile machinery

increase unharvested woodland by 50% (no time frame given), grants to farmers for scrub rewilding, rewet Pete Boggs, make 30% of the EEZ protected waters and ban bottom trawling

§4b/a in skills training to stop gas communities getting Thatchered, prioritising shifting these workers into offshore wind

a.. licensing scheme for all pet animals? you guys sure about that one

regulate animal farming with a goal of banning factory farms, ban mass routine antibiotics, ban cages/close confinement and animal mutilation

ban all hunting including coursing and "game", ban snaring, ban hunt-landscaping such as grouse moors, end the badger cull, mandate licensing of all animal workers with lifetime striking off for cruelty convictions, compulsory hedgehog holes in new fencing, 'push' for 'ending' horse and dog racing [clarification needed], new criminal offences for stealing and harming pets, 'work towards' banning animal testing

🗳️DEMOCRACY

proportional representation for parliament and all councils

abolish voter ID

votes at sixteen

votes for all visa'd migrants

restore the electoral commission's prosecutory powers and remove the cap on fines it can impose on parties

increase Short Money, especially for smaller parties

create a manifest legal category of organisation for think tanks, to allow better enforcement of lobbying and funding restrictions

consider fun new measures for political accessibility such as MP jobsharing and allowing public provision of offices for all parliamentary candidates

🎲OTHER STUFF

Self-ID including nonbinary recognition, including with an X passport marker

"work towards rejoining the eu as soon as the domestic political situation is favourable", join the eea now (with restored free movement)

let local authorities invest shares in sports teams, including professional ones, dividends ringfenced for public sports facilities and coaching

right to die

[probablyasocialecologist]

Brazil, an agricultural superpower and the world’s largest net exporter of food, has also seen hunger and poverty rise in recent years, after the administration of Jair Bolsonaro dismantled social policies, amid an economic downturn. Heartbreakingly, almost three in every five households do not always have enough to eat, while 33 million people (about 15 percent of the population) are going hungry. But now President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was inaugurated in January, has stepped up. “I am obsessed with fighting hunger … I want workers to once again be able to have three meals a day in a dignified manner and to provide quality food for their children,” he said as he launched the Brasil Sem Fome (Brazil Without Hunger) plan in late August. Arguably the most comprehensive set of anti-hunger policies the world has ever seen, this bold plan opens a new front in the global war on hunger, just as hope was beginning to fade. The Brasil Sem Fome – on which the National Food and Nutrition Security Council (CONSEA), the organisation I chair, advised – has far-reaching but simple goals. It aims to wipe Brazil off the UN Hunger Map by 2030 – no ifs or buts – and to ensure that more than 95 percent of households are food secure by the end of the decade. It also aims to improve access to healthy diets and kick-start a transition to sustainable agriculture. Some 32 programmes and policies will be leveraged to achieve these goals – from cash transfers to poor households to the purchase of healthy school food from smallholder farmers; from agroecological transition payments to support for Black and rural women, to bolstering protection of the Amazon. All of this will come under an apparatus that is purpose-built to bring the voices of food-insecure and marginalised people into the decision-making process. If this plan sounds familiar, that is because it is a recast of the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) policies introduced by Lula’s first administration in 2003 – but with an extra dose of ambition on democratic governance and sustainably produced food, reaching the most marginalised groups.

[dailyanarchistposts]

F.8.5 What about the lack of enclosures in the Americas?

The enclosure movement was but one part of a wide-reaching process of state intervention in creating capitalism. Moreover, it is just one way of creating the “land monopoly” which ensured the creation of a working class. The circumstances facing the ruling class in the Americas were distinctly different than in the Old World and so the “land monopoly” took a different form there. In the Americas, enclosures were unimportant as customary land rights did not really exist (at least once the Native Americans were eliminated by violence). Here the problem was that (after the original users of the land were eliminated) there were vast tracts of land available for people to use. Other forms of state intervention were similar to that applied under mercantilism in Europe (such as tariffs, government spending, use of unfree labour and state repression of workers and their organisations and so on). All had one aim, to enrich and power the masters and dispossess the actual producers of the means of life (land and means of production).

Unsurprisingly, due to the abundance of land, there was a movement towards independent farming in the early years of the American colonies and subsequent Republic and this pushed up the price of remaining labour on the market by reducing the supply. Capitalists found it difficult to find workers willing to work for them at wages low enough to provide them with sufficient profits. It was due to the difficulty in finding cheap enough labour that capitalists in America turned to slavery. All things being equal, wage labour is more productive than slavery but in early America all things were not equal. Having access to cheap (indeed, free) land meant that working people had a choice, and few desired to become wage slaves and so because of this, capitalists turned to slavery in the South and the “land monopoly” in the North.

This was because, in the words of Maurice Dobb, it “became clear to those who wished to reproduce capitalist relations of production in the new country that the foundation-stone of their endeavour must be the restriction of land-ownership to a minority and the exclusion of the majority from any share in [productive] property.” [Studies in Capitalist Development, pp. 221–2] As one radical historian puts it, ”[w]hen land is ‘free’ or ‘cheap’. as it was in different regions of the United States before the 1830s, there was no compulsion for farmers to introduce labour-saving technology. As a result, ‘independent household production’ … hindered the development of capitalism … [by] allowing large portions of the population to escape wage labour.” [Charlie Post, “The ‘Agricultural Revolution’ in the United States”, pp. 216–228, Science and Society, vol. 61, no. 2, p. 221]

It was precisely this option (i.e. of independent production) that had to be destroyed in order for capitalist industry to develop. The state had to violate the holy laws of “supply and demand” by controlling the access to land in order to ensure the normal workings of “supply and demand” in the labour market (i.e. that the bargaining position favoured employer over employee). Once this situation became the typical one (i.e., when the option of self-employment was effectively eliminated) a more (protectionist based) “laissez-faire” approach could be adopted, with state action used indirectly to favour the capitalists and landlords (and readily available to protect private property from the actions of the dispossessed).

So how was this transformation of land ownership achieved?

Instead of allowing settlers to appropriate their own farms as was often the case before the 1830s, the state stepped in once the army had cleared out (usually by genocide) the original users. Its first major role was to enforce legal rights of property on unused land. Land stolen from the Native Americans was sold at auction to the highest bidders, namely speculators, who then sold it on to farmers. This process started right “after the revolution, [when] huge sections of land were bought up by rich speculators” and their claims supported by the law. [Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 125] Thus land which should have been free was sold to land-hungry farmers and the few enriched themselves at the expense of the many. Not only did this increase inequality within society, it also encouraged the development of wage labour — having to pay for land would have ensured that many immigrants remained on the East Coast until they had enough money. Thus a pool of people with little option but to sell their labour was increased due to state protection of unoccupied land. That the land usually ended up in the hands of farmers did not (could not) countermand the shift in class forces that this policy created.

This was also the essential role of the various “Homesteading Acts” and, in general, the “Federal land law in the 19th century provided for the sale of most of the public domain at public auction to the higher bidder … Actual settlers were forced to buy land from speculators, at prices considerably above the federal minimal price.” (which few people could afford anyway). [Charlie Post, Op. Cit., p. 222] This is confirmed by Howard Zinn who notes that 1862 Homestead Act “gave 160 acres of western land, unoccupied and publicly owned, to anyone who would cultivate it for five years … Few ordinary people had the $200 necessary to do this; speculators moved in and bought up much of the land. Homestead land added up to 50 million acres. But during the Civil War, over 100 million acres were given by Congress and the President to various railroads, free of charge.” [Op. Cit., p. 233] Little wonder the Individualist Anarchists supported an “occupancy and use” system of land ownership as a key way of stopping capitalist and landlord usury as well as the development of capitalism itself.

This change in the appropriation of land had significant effects on agriculture and the desirability of taking up farming for immigrants. As Post notes, ”[w]hen the social conditions for obtaining and maintaining possession of land change, as they did in the Midwest between 1830 and 1840, pursuing the goal of preserving [family ownership and control] .. . produced very different results. In order to pay growing mortgages, debts and taxes, family farmers were compelled to specialise production toward cash crops and to market more and more of their output.” [Op. Cit., p. 221–2]

So, in order to pay for land which was formerly free, farmers got themselves into debt and increasingly turned to the market to pay it off. Thus, the “Federal land system, by transforming land into a commodity and stimulating land speculation, made the Midwestern farmers dependent upon markets for the continual possession of their farms.” Once on the market, farmers had to invest in new machinery and this also got them into debt. In the face of a bad harvest or market glut, they could not repay their loans and their farms had to be sold to so do so. By 1880, 25% of all farms were rented by tenants, and the numbers kept rising. In addition, the “transformation of social property relations in northern agriculture set the stage for the ‘agricultural revolution’ of the 1840s and 1850s … [R]ising debts and taxes forced Midwestern family farmers to compete as commodity producers in order to maintain their land-holding … The transformation … was the central precondition for the development of industrial capitalism in the United States.” [Charlie Post, Op. Cit., p. 223 and p. 226]

It should be noted that feudal land owning was enforced in many areas of the colonies and the early Republic. Landlords had their holdings protected by the state and their demands for rent had the full backing of the state. This lead to numerous anti-rent conflicts. [Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 84 and pp. 206–11] Such struggles helped end such arrangements, with landlords being “encouraged” to allow the farmers to buy the land which was rightfully theirs. The wealth appropriated from the farmers in the form of rent and the price of the land could then be invested in industry so transforming feudal relations on the land into capitalist relations in industry (and, eventually, back on the land when the farmers succumbed to the pressures of the capitalist market and debt forced them to sell).

This means that Murray Rothbard’s comment that “once the land was purchased by the settler, the injustice disappeared” is nonsense — the injustice was transmitted to other parts of society and this, the wider legacy of the original injustice, lived on and helped transform society towards capitalism. In addition, his comment about “the establishment in North America of a truly libertarian land system” would be one the Individualist Anarchists of the period would have seriously disagreed with! [The Ethics of Liberty, p. 73] Rothbard, at times, seems to be vaguely aware of the importance of land as the basis of freedom in early America. For example, he notes in passing that “the abundance of fertile virgin land in a vast territory enabled individualism to come to full flower in many areas.” [Conceived in Liberty, vol. 2, p. 186] Yet he did not ponder the transformation in social relationships which would result when that land was gone. In fact, he was blasé about it. “If latecomers are worse off,” he opined, “well then that is their proper assumption of risk in this free and uncertain world. There is no longer a vast frontier in the United States, and there is no point crying over the fact.” [The Ethics of Liberty, p. 240] Unsurprisingly we also find Murray Rothbard commenting that Native Americans “lived under a collectivistic regime that, for land allocation, was scarcely more just than the English governmental land grab.” [Conceived in Liberty, vol. 1, p. 187] That such a regime made for increased individual liberty and that it was precisely the independence from the landlord and bosses this produced which made enclosure and state land grabs such appealing prospects for the ruling class was lost on him.

Unlike capitalist economists, politicians and bosses at the time, Rothbard seemed unaware that this “vast frontier” (like the commons) was viewed as a major problem for maintaining labour discipline and appropriate state action was taken to reduce it by restricting free access to the land in order to ensure that workers were dependent on wage labour. Many early economists recognised this and advocated such action. Edward Wakefield was typical when he complained that “where land is cheap and all are free, where every one who so pleases can easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour dear, as respects the labourer’s share of the product, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour at any price.” This resulted in a situation were few “can accumulate great masses of wealth” as workers “cease … to be labourers for hire; they … become independent landowners, if not competitors with their former masters in the labour market.” Unsurprisingly, Wakefield urged state action to reduce this option and ensure that labour become cheap as workers had little choice but to seek a master. One key way was for the state to seize the land and then sell it to the population. This would ensure that “no labourer would be able to procure land until he had worked for money” and this “would produce capital for the employment of more labourers.” [quoted by Marx, Op. Cit., , p. 935, p. 936 and p. 939] Which is precisely what did occur.

At the same time that it excluded the working class from virgin land, the state granted large tracts of land to the privileged classes: to land speculators, logging and mining companies, planters, railroads, and so on. In addition to seizing the land and distributing it in such a way as to benefit capitalist industry, the “government played its part in helping the bankers and hurting the farmers; it kept the amount of money — based in the gold supply — steady while the population rose, so there was less and less money in circulation. The farmer had to pay off his debts in dollars that were harder to get. The bankers, getting loans back, were getting dollars worth more than when they loaned them out — a kind of interest on top of interest. That was why so much of the talk of farmers’ movements in those days had to do with putting more money in circulation.” [Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 278] This was the case with the Individualist Anarchists at the same time, we must add.

Overall, therefore, state action ensured the transformation of America from a society of independent workers to a capitalist one. By creating and enforcing the “land monopoly” (of which state ownership of unoccupied land and its enforcement of landlord rights were the most important) the state ensured that the balance of class forces tipped in favour of the capitalist class. By removing the option of farming your own land, the US government created its own form of enclosure and the creation of a landless workforce with little option but to sell its liberty on the “free market”. They was nothing “natural” about it. Little wonder the Individualist Anarchist J.K. Ingalls attacked the “land monopoly” with the following words:

“The earth, with its vast resources of mineral wealth, its spontaneous productions and its fertile soil, the free gift of God and the common patrimony of mankind, has for long centuries been held in the grasp of one set of oppressors by right of conquest or right of discovery; and it is now held by another, through the right of purchase from them. All of man’s natural possessions … have been claimed as property; nor has man himself escaped the insatiate jaws of greed. The invasion of his rights and possessions has resulted … in clothing property with a power to accumulate an income.” [quoted by James Martin, Men Against the State, p. 142]

Marx, correctly, argued that “the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of that private property which rests on the labour of the individual himself; in other words, the expropriation of the worker.” [Capital, Vol. 1, p. 940] He noted that to achieve this, the state is used:

“How then can the anti-capitalistic cancer of the colonies be healed? . .. Let the Government set an artificial price on the virgin soil, a price independent of the law of supply and demand, a price that compels the immigrant to work a long time for wages before he can earn enough money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent farmer.” [Op. Cit., p. 938]

Moreover, tariffs were introduced with “the objective of manufacturing capitalists artificially” for the “system of protection was an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, or expropriating independent workers, of capitalising the national means of production and subsistence, and of forcibly cutting short the transition … to the modern mode of production,” to capitalism [Op. Cit., p. 932 and pp. 921–2]

So mercantilism, state aid in capitalist development, was also seen in the United States of America. As Edward Herman points out, the “level of government involvement in business in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present has followed a U-shaped pattern: There was extensive government intervention in the pre-Civil War period (major subsidies, joint ventures with active government participation and direct government production), then a quasi-laissez faire period between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century [a period marked by “the aggressive use of tariff protection” and state supported railway construction, a key factor in capitalist expansion in the USA], followed by a gradual upswing of government intervention in the twentieth century, which accelerated after 1930.” [Corporate Control, Corporate Power, p. 162]

Such intervention ensured that income was transferred from workers to capitalists. Under state protection, America industrialised by forcing the consumer to enrich the capitalists and increase their capital stock. “According to one study, if the tariff had been removed in the 1830s ‘about half the industrial sector of New England would have been bankrupted’ … the tariff became a near-permanent political institution representing government assistance to manufacturing. It kept price levels from being driven down by foreign competition and thereby shifted the distribution of income in favour of owners of industrial property to the disadvantage of workers and customers.” This protection was essential, for the “end of the European wars in 1814 … reopened the United States to a flood of British imports that drove many American competitors out of business. Large portions of the newly expanded manufacturing base were wiped out, bringing a decade of near-stagnation.” Unsurprisingly, the “era of protectionism began in 1816, with northern agitation for higher tariffs.” [Richard B. Du Boff, Accumulation and Power, p. 56, p. 14 and p. 55] Combined with ready repression of the labour movement and government “homesteading” acts (see section F.8.5), tariffs were the American equivalent of mercantilism (which, after all, was above all else a policy of protectionism, i.e. the use of government to stimulate the growth of native industry). Only once America was at the top of the economic pile did it renounce state intervention (just as Britain did, we must note).

This is not to suggest that government aid was limited to tariffs. The state played a key role in the development of industry and manufacturing. As John Zerzan notes, the “role of the State is tellingly reflected by the fact that the ‘armoury system’ now rivals the older ‘American system of manufactures’ term as the more accurate to describe the new system of production methods” developed in the early 1800s. [Elements of Refusal, p. 100] By the middle of the nineteenth century “a distinctive ‘American system of manufactures’ had emerged . .. The lead in technological innovation [during the US Industrial Revolution] came in armaments where assured government orders justified high fixed-cost investments in special-pursue machinery and managerial personnel. Indeed, some of the pioneering effects occurred in government-owned armouries.” Other forms of state aid were used, for example the textile industry “still required tariffs to protect [it] from … British competition.” [William Lazonick, Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor, p. 218 and p. 219] The government also “actively furthered this process [of ‘commercial revolution’] with public works in transportation and communication.” In addition to this “physical” aid, “state government provided critical help, with devices like the chartered corporation” [Richard B. Du Boff, Op. Cit., p. 15] As we noted in section B.2.5, there were changes in the legal system which favoured capitalist interests over the rest of society.

Nineteenth-century America also went in heavily for industrial planning — occasionally under that name but more often in the name of national defence. The military was the excuse for what is today termed rebuilding infrastructure, picking winners, promoting research, and co-ordinating industrial growth (as it still is, we should add). As Richard B. Du Boff points out, the “anti-state” backlash of the 1840s onwards in America was highly selective, as the general opinion was that ”[h]enceforth, if governments wished to subsidise private business operations, there would be no objection. But if public power were to be used to control business actions or if the public sector were to undertake economic initiatives on its own, it would run up against the determined opposition of private capital.” [Op. Cit., p. 26]

State intervention was not limited to simply reducing the amount of available land or enforcing a high tariff. “Given the independent spirit of workers in the colonies, capital understood that great profits required the use of unfree labour.” [Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism, p. 246] It was also applied in the labour market as well. Most obviously, it enforced the property rights of slave owners (until the civil war, produced when the pro-free trade policies of the South clashed with the pro-tariff desires of the capitalist North). The evil and horrors of slavery are well documented, as is its key role in building capitalism in America and elsewhere so we will concentrate on other forms of obviously unfree labour. Convict labour in Australia, for example, played an important role in the early days of colonisation while in America indentured servants played a similar role.

Indentured service was a system whereby workers had to labour for a specific number of years usually in return for passage to America with the law requiring the return of runaway servants. In theory, of course, the person was only selling their labour. In practice, indentured servants were basically slaves and the courts enforced the laws that made it so. The treatment of servants was harsh and often as brutal as that inflicted on slaves. Half the servants died in the first two years and unsurprisingly, runaways were frequent. The courts realised this was a problem and started to demand that everyone have identification and travel papers.

It should also be noted that the practice of indentured servants also shows how state intervention in one country can impact on others. This is because people were willing to endure indentured service in the colonies because of how bad their situation was at home. Thus the effects of primitive accumulation in Britain impacted on the development of America as most indentured servants were recruited from the growing number of unemployed people in urban areas there. Dispossessed from their land and unable to find work in the cities, many became indentured servants in order to take passage to the Americas. In fact, between one half to two thirds of all immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants and, at times, three-quarters of the population of some colonies were under contracts of indenture. That this allowed the employing class to overcome their problems in hiring “help” should go without saying, as should its impact on American inequality and the ability of capitalists and landlords to enrich themselves on their servants labour and to invest it profitably.

As well as allowing unfree labour, the American state intervened to ensure that the freedom of wage workers was limited in similar ways as we indicated in section F.8.3. “The changes in social relations of production in artisan trades that took place in the thirty years after 1790,” notes one historian, “and the … trade unionism to which … it gave rise, both replicated in important respects the experience of workers in the artisan trades in Britain over a rather longer period … The juridical responses they provoked likewise reproduced English practice. Beginning in 1806, American courts consciously seized upon English common law precedent to combat journeymen’s associations.” Capitalists in this era tried to “secure profit … through the exercise of disciplinary power over their employees.” To achieve this “employers made a bid for legal aid” and it is here “that the key to law’s role in the process of creating an industrial economy in America lies.” As in the UK, the state invented laws and issues proclamations against workers’ combinations, calling them conspiracies and prosecuting them as such. Trade unionists argued that laws which declared unions as illegal combinations should be repealed as against the Constitution of the USA while “the specific cause of trademens protestations of their right to organise was, unsurprisingly, the willingness of local authorities to renew their resort to conspiracy indictments to countermand the growing power of the union movement.” Using criminal conspiracy to counter combinations among employees was commonplace, with the law viewing a “collective quitting of employment [as] a criminal interference” and combinations to raise the rate of labour “indictable at common law.” [Christopher L. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic, p. 113, p. 295, p. 159 and p. 213] By the end of the nineteenth century, state repression for conspiracy was replaced by state repression for acting like a trust while actual trusts were ignored and so laws, ostensibly passed (with the help of the unions themselves) to limit the power of capital, were turned against labour (this should be unsurprising as it was a capitalist state which passed them). [Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p. 254]

Another key means to limit the freedom of workers was denying departing workers their wages for the part of the contract they had completed. This “underscored the judiciary’s tendency to articulate their approval” of the hierarchical master/servant relationship in terms of its “social utility: It was a necessary and desirable feature of the social organisation of work … that the employer’s authority be reinforced in this way.” Appeals courts held that “an employment contract was an entire contract, and therefore that no obligation to pay wages existed until the employee had completed the agreed term.” Law suits “by employers seeking damages for an employee’s departure prior to the expiry of an agreed term or for other forms of breach of contract constituted one form of legally sanctioned economic discipline of some importance in shaping the employment relations of the nineteenth century.” Thus the boss could fire the worker without paying their wages while if the worker left the boss he would expect a similar outcome. This was because the courts had decided that the “employer was entitled not only to receipt of the services contracted for in their entirety prior to payment but also to the obedience of the employee in the process of rendering them.” [Tomlins, Op. Cit., pp. 278–9, p. 274, p. 272 and pp. 279–80] The ability of workers to seek self-employment on the farm or workplace or even better conditions and wages were simply abolished by employers turning to the state.

So, in summary, the state could remedy the shortage of cheap wage labour by controlling access to the land, repressing trade unions as conspiracies or trusts and ensuring that workers had to obey their bosses for the full term of their contract (while the bosses could fire them at will). Combine this with the extensive use of tariffs, state funding of industry and infrastructure among many other forms of state aid to capitalists and we have a situation were capitalism was imposed on a pre-capitalist nation at the behest of the wealthy elite by the state, as was the case with all other countries.

[justforbooks]

This is a book for readers of second world war history who like the Boy’s Own version of the conflict. The cast of characters could have stepped straight from a comic strip story. Yet the men of the SAS were real flesh and blood, “rogue heroes” as the title suggests. The organisation now famous for its derring-do, and as famously secretive, has opened its archive to the historian and journalist Ben Macintyre, so that he can produce the first authorised history of what the SAS did in the war.

Macintyre has made the most of the opportunity. The history needs scarcely any embellishment, though he tells it with flair: the simple facts of SAS activity make the “ripping yarns” of comic book heroes pale by comparison. The organisation was the brainchild of two officers posted to the war in Egypt, David Stirling and John “Jock” Lewes. Stirling was an awkward soldier, hostile to spit-and-polish and authority, charming, fun-loving and irreverent (“layer upon layer of fossilised shit” was how he described military bureaucracy). Bored by life in Cairo, he discussed with the ascetic, hard-working, serious-minded Lewes, his complete opposite in personality, the possibility of creating a unit of awkward men like himself, who wanted action, few rules and adventure in small hit-and-run assaults behind enemy lines. Astonishingly, Stirling persuaded the high command in Cairo that he could achieve something significant at low cost in men and materials. The chief of British deception in the desert war, Dudley Clarke, gave the unit its name. Already fooling the Italians with a bogus parachute unit, the First Special Air Service Brigade, he lent the name to Stirling, and the organisation has borne it ever since.

Macintyre uses the SAS war diary as the backbone of his narrative, and is candid about failure as well as the hard-earned successes. The SAS was an irregular unit, its members drawn from an extraordinary range of backgrounds – a spectacles salesman, a textile merchant, a tomato farmer, amateur boxer, and so on – with a range of motives to match. Some wanted excitement, some liked killing and made no pretence about it, some were escaping from their past, some were too eccentric for the ranks; all had to be fit, alert, crafty, ruthless if required and dedicated to the mission. Stirling was also aware that his outfit did not meet with approval in conventional military circles, which saw war as face-to-face, not behind the back. Churchill liked the force, and would no doubt have joined it had it existed in his youth. But through the campaign in North Africa, then Italy and Germany, the SAS had always to prove itself, in order to stave off disbandment.

The new unit nevertheless made a disastrous start and indeed had mixed fortunes throughout the war. The first operation, code-named “Squatter”, carried out while the handful of volunteers were still feeling their way, could not have gone more wrong. Poorly trained as paratroopers, the group nevertheless flew off into a desert storm trying to land at pre-planned dropping zones well to the rear of the enemy. They landed in the worst places, faced a Saharan downpour of biblical proportions, lost some of the troop to injury as they hit the ground, and were then unable to retrieve the parachuted supplies. With explosives so soaked they were worthless, uncertain about their whereabouts, short of food and water, the remnants of the original units made their way back to Egypt. Out of 55 men, 34 were killed, injured, captured or missing without a single achievement.

Macintyre makes the point that this was by no means the end of a madcap idea. Stirling recruited the Long Range Desert Group to take the SAS teams by Jeep or truck rather than risk any further parachute drops, and the second set of raids in December 1941 resulted in the destruction or disabling of 60 enemy aircraft. But Operation Bigamy, a series of raids against Benghazi shortly before the battle of El Alamein, was another disaster. It featured one of the most bizarre figures to emerge from the story: a Belgian textile merchant, Robert Melot. Fluent in Arabic, keen to get at the Germans, he volunteered for the SAS aged 47 as an intelligence officer. He used his range of Libyan contacts to glean information needed for the raids, but in this case Melot miscalculated. An Arab double agent alerted the Germans and Italians and the raids were a disaster. Once again a forlorn, bearded, hungry and damaged band straggled back to Cairo. Melot carried on his SAS career regardless, and died not from his many scrapes in battle, but from a Jeep accident on his way to a party in Brussels late in 1944.

The SAS came of age in the campaign in Italy, where it was used as a more conventional raiding party, the Special Raiding Service, under the command of Paddy Mayne following Stirling’s capture in Tunisia in late 1942. The Italian campaign was a particularly grisly one, and the SRS (with its core of SAS men) found collaboration with the partisans and rivalry with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) a challenge (unlike the SAS, the SOE always linked up with local resistance). Macintyre spares none of the details; the SAS fought a dirty war against an enemy they regarded as every bit as dirty. Prisoners were rare, but in return Hitler condemned irregular commando units to death if they were caught. Not all were killed by any means, but many were, just as the Germans killed all the other irregular, partisan forces ranged against them.

In October 1945 the army wound up the SAS and it continued to exist by subterfuge, a unit of war crimes investigators searching for evidence across Europe that SAS members had been murdered. In 1947, to meet the many crises of empire, the SAS was revived. What it did then and since can be guessed at, but until the postwar unit diaries are revealed, like the wartime diary used by Macintyre, the exact details will not be known.

What in the end did the SAS achieve in the war? Macintyre does not really say, leaving the narrative to speak for itself. It did not, as some of the book’s publicity has suggested, turn the tide of war. Its overall accomplishment, set beside those of the Commandos, or the SOE, the Chindits or other partisan groups, was strategically modest, whatever its tactical successes. But the SAS did bring to life the plucky, maverick, individualist hero of the comic strip, a very British way of making war. SAS: Rogue Heroes is a great read of wartime adventuring, in a long, grim war of attrition where adventure was hard to find.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

‘Fight waste to fight hunger’: food banks embrace imperfection to feed millions in Brazil

More than 40% of produce in the country is lost or wasted but new research highlights how it could be a key tool in fighting rising food insecurity. One charity is leading the charge

About half a dozen men in hairnets busy themselves with crates of fresh produce outside a food depot in Rio de Janeiro’s northern suburbs. As one reels off a list of products, the others place oddly shaped vegetables into large bags before loading them into a waiting car. The produce will later be cooked and served in soup kitchens, nurseries and other institutions offering free meals to people in need across the city.

The depot is run by Brazil’s biggest network of food banks, Sesc Mesa Brasil. With 95 units all over the country, Mesa – which means table in Portuguese – collects food that would otherwise go to waste from supermarkets, farmers and other suppliers and retailers, sorts it, and then donates it to partner organisations.

“The programme has two pillars, to fight food waste and to fight hunger,” says Cláudia Roseno, an aid manager at Sesc, a not-for-profit private enterprise providing culture, leisure, education, health and aid services across Brazil.

New research published last week highlights how such efforts to reduce food waste can be bolstered in Brazil and used as a key tool for fighting widespread food insecurity.

Continue reading.

[fpotci01]

The FPO Platform, brought to you by the Tata-Cornell Institute, is designed to empower FPOs and drive sustainable agricultural development. Our platform offers a range of services, including FPO registration assistance, capacity building programs, and access to financial resources. Discover new markets, enhance your product quality, and strengthen your FPO's resilience. Join the FPO Platform and unlock the full potential of your farming enterprise. For more information, visit: https://fpo.tci.cornell.edu/

[acti-veg]

Animal rights campaigners welcomed his calls for better regulation, enforcement and a halt to the growth of the industry. But they said his comments highlight the “untenable position” of the RSPCA’s welfare stamp of approval scheme for salmon farms.

The RSPCA received £700,000 in membership and licence fees in 2022 from salmon farmers and producers as part of its RSPCA Assured scheme. Nearly 100% of Scottish farmed salmon is produced under the scheme.

Rachel Mulrenan, Scotland director of WildFish, said: “Any public figure making a commitment to raise awareness of the issues with salmon farming is positive. But this dual role that the RSPCA is playing is unhelpful. RSPCA Assured should not be certifying salmon farms, it interferes with the work of the organisation to raise awareness of action needed. The certificate is a proxy for good environmental performance and welfare, but this is not matched on the water. Look at the mortality numbers this month alone.”

The latest figures, published by the Fish Health Inspectorate , show that 13.5 million salmon mortalities were reported by Scottish farms from January to October this yearC, compared with 11.5 million during the same period in 2022. That year saw salmon deaths on farms almost double, due to growing levels of disease, parasites and jellyfish swarms.

[scotianostra]

On May 10th 1850 Thomas Lipton, founder of the Lipton's grocery chain was born in Glasgow.

Before the big supermarkets took over we lhad ots of wee ones, every street had a Liptons, or a Galbraith even a Templetons!

Liptons was one of the originals started by a guy from Glasgow who built an empire and the tea brand still bares his name.

Born in a tenement flat in Crown Street, the Gorbals, Liptons parents were Irish and had left the Emerald Isle during the potato famine, the smallholding their family had farmed on for generations no longer viable they settled in Glasgow. 'Tommy' Lipton was educated at St. Andrew's Parish School close to Glasgow Green and by the time Tommy was 12 his parents had a shop in the street they lived selling ham, butter, and eggs. It was with the aim of supplementing his parents' limited income that Thomas Lipton left school at the age of thirteen and found employment as a printer's errand boy, and later as a shirtcutter. He also enrolled at a night school, the Gorbals Youth's School, during this period. He then found work as a cabin boy a steamer running between Glasgow and Belfast and was captivated by life aboard the ship and the stories told by sailors who had traveled to the US After being let go by the steamer company, Lipton quickly used the wages he had saved to purchase passage on a ship bound for the U.S., where he would spend five years working and traveling all over the country.

Back in Scotland on his 21st birthday, In 1871 Lipton opened his firstown shop at 101 Stobcross Street in Glasgow. In the heart of industrial Glasgow, full of smoke and fog, the shop was said to be so brightly lit that at night it became a beacon in the street. Goods were stacked in the American fashion, not for the convenience of the proprietors, but with the purpose of catching the customers’ attention. Lipton used another selling technique learned from his time in the States and from his Mother's shop.

When his parents had opened their small shop, Mrs. Lipton, rather than deal with middlemen at the markets, dealt directly with the farmers of her homeland. Lipton followed this example. He bought his bacon, eggs, butter and other produce directly from Irish farmers. The firm traded as a supermarket until 1982 when another group bought the shops that were to become Presto’s, the decision was made as they wanted to solely concentrate on the Tea business which it does to this day, in 2009 Lipton received a Corporate Green Globe Award for its work with the Rainforest Alliance.

As well as the tea and the shops but Lipton was also a keen sailor, he holds a place in the America’s Cup heart as being the most reliably consistent and deftly congenial loser. Five times he challenged for the Cup, five times being defeated. Despite his best laid plans and momentous effort to win the cup, the tea magnate simply didn’t cut the mustard. Nonetheless, he did have a penchant for beautiful boats. His last challenger, Shamrock V, never really stood a chance of winning the race but it did win marks for pure beauty. His well-publicised efforts to win the cup, which earned him a specially designed cup for “the best of all losers”, and also made his tea famous in the United States.

During the first world war Thomas Lipton helped organisations of medical volunteers. He placed his yachts at the disposal of the Red Cross, the Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee of Dr. Elsie Inglis, the Serbian Supporting Fund, etc., for the transport of medical volunteers (doctors and nurses) and medical supplies. Not content with just allowing his boats to be used he also took a keen interest in the work of Elsie Inglis and the womans hospital, visiting Serbia, where he insisted on humble lodgings and was renowned for his humility and modesty. .In addition to visiting many hospitals, where he encouraged doctors, nurses and soldiers, he found time to attend traditional fairs and to take a part in blackberry gathering and fishing. Sir Thomas Lipton was proclaimed an honorary citizen of the city of Niš.

Lipton even made the cover of Time magazine during 1924. He was knighted in 1901. Sir Thomas Lipton passed away on 2nd October 1931 in London and is buried alongside his parents and siblings in Glasgow's Southern Necropolis, his grave, like the man himself, a humble, simple understated affair, he bequeathed the majority of his fortune to his native city of Glasgow, including his yachting trophies, which are now on display at the Kelvingrove Gallery.

[cherrylng]

The reality of Oxfam's involvement with Coldplay [CROSSBEAT (August 2006)]

In the UK, where philanthropy is very popular, celebrities and individuals often choose one (or more) of a number of organisations and campaigns to support and work with as part of their life's work. Coldplay's commitment to the UK-based development NGO Oxfam's 'Make Trade Fair' campaign is widely known.

The ‘unfair trade’ that prevails in the world is a long-standing problem between the so-called ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries. Historically, it has the same roots as the unfair colonial trade once practised by Western countries. Western countries buy raw materials at low prices from developing countries (without teaching them the technology) and export them, while selling goods mass-produced in their own countries to developing countries. Even now, developed countries are forcing developing countries to open their markets, putting pressure on the livelihoods of local farmers and workers. In the 1990s, when people became aware of the problems of unfair trade, it began to become a problem that footballs made by young children in Pakistan and other Asian countries, who were not allowed to go to school and were forced to work for cheap wages, were traded at high prices in the UK. In addition, in the banana industry, where five major corporations control more than 80% of the world market, the struggles of Latin American farmers, who are forced to ship at unfairly low prices, attracted attention and support movements in the late 1990s. As a result, when the first ‘fair trade bananas’ were imported into the UK in 2000, it was widely reported.

In 2002, Oxfam launched an international campaign to bring together the sporadic campaign to correct unfair trade and to call on governments and the WTO to change trade rules and shift policies. In 2002, Chris and his staff visited the Dominican Republic and Haiti in Central America to see first-hand the plight of the local people and the production of coffee beans, which had seen a decline in wholesale prices in recent years. In 2003, they visited Mexico, where they performed as a band at a concert in support of maize farmers fighting against cheap imports from the USA. In 2005, Chris toured Ghana (see photo) and was shocked to learn that cheap agricultural imports from the West were destroying local agriculture and contributing to poverty. Incidentally, Ghana is the second largest producer of cocoa beans in the world, yet it cannot make chocolate. Even if they did, they could not export it because of high tariffs imposed by developed countries.

What is needed is not for rich countries to seek more wealth, but for them to share it with less rich countries. "When I was a child in the 80s, if you saw on TV the miserable situation of farmers, the only solution was to ‘donate money’. But here I see other solutions. I mean, everyone can participate by speaking up. The more I study, the more I think that poverty is also caused by trade imbalances. What I feel is particularly serious is that we are ruining the industries of developing countries by exporting products that are surplus in developed countries at unbeatable prices. It's crazy. It should be easy to stop." (Chris).

Chris has made the movement known by wearing campaign slogan T-shirts in public, including at shows, and by contributing a column to newspapers. "As long as we're providing music with heart, we can talk openly about things we feel are important in the media in developed countries. We can also promote Fair Trade and play our part in putting pressure on governments in the developed world to expand our activities and bring about trade inequalities." -Sumi Imai

[bumblebeeappletree]

Costa tours the food rescue initiative OzHarvest and meets the team transforming waste into taste.

OzHarvest is the biggest supplier of rescued food in Australia and it’s where food, gardening and community come together. In 2004 Ronni Kahn developed the idea to rescue fresh food destined for landfill and over 20 years they've delivered more than 225 million meals to hungry Aussies. Ronni says, “I saw food waste in my business and one day decided to do something about it, not even imagining that this is what would come out of it... I didn't realize the scale of waste; I didn't realize that food waste feeds climate change. I thought I'd start a social organization but very soon I realized it was also an environmental organization.”

Australia wastes 7.6 million tons of food a year. OzHarvest rescues 250 tons a week which Ronni says, “is the equivalent of two blue whales, if you just want to imagine quantity.” The national figure of 7.6M tones is caused one-third by farms, one-third by industry and one-third by households “so we really do have a huge role to play,” says Ronni. Every day the team set off in their iconic yellow vans to collect and distribute donated food from their Sydney base in Alexandria. They collect from everywhere in the food supply chain including farmers, supermarkets, manufacturers and wherever food is served or produced. Ronni says, “we deliver that out to over 2000 charitable organisations, but that's not all that we do. Our education arm is hugely important.”

In addition to a school program called Feast, OzHarvest delivers community team-building programs called Cooking for a Cause. Here people gain essential cooking skills, such as proper knife-handling techniques and how to use every millimetre of food put in front of them. Dishes made in these programs are tasted by the learners and then sent out to people in need. Ronni says, “this is dignity and respect in a container.” OzHarvest chef, Mark Hamilton, says, “this is what I like to do... teaching them little tips and tricks about food waste and giving them new skills in the kitchen.” Participant Lucinda says, “I’m amazed that all this food was donated for one thing, that we could turn it into such a delicious-looking meal and learn some fabulous skills from Chef Mark. I hope our team are really happy with what we've done, and that the people at the end of the line enjoy the food.”

A lot of the produce is also grown on-site in a raised kitchen garden. They grow fruit trees, vegetables and a wide range of herbs, with a focus on growing produce that is less likely to be donated fresh. It’s run entirely by volunteers and garden team leader, Ruth Dexter, says, “it's been a case of experimenting with what will grow here, with the limits we have with sunshine, water and being stuck in the middle of an industrial estate.” Garden team leader, Edgar Liu, says, “we also try to grow things that have multiple purposes, like the fennel for example. We can get the bulb, we can use the fronds, the pollen, and even the seeds.”

Reflecting on what OzHarvest has achieved, Ronni says, “I'm actually in awe of what it has become. My intention was to stop food waste, do that for a little bit until I’d solved the problem, but I didn't realize the scale of the problem. I look around and see all our programs and our masses of volunteers, a staff now of over 300 people; it blows my mind, but the truth is the need is there. All we’re here to do is service and have the greatest impact we can. I think if I have one message it's that every single one of us can play, and must play our part.”