It’s heart-breaking to think that there will be farmers in the United States, harvesting produce bound for Iraq, who actually, sincerely, think they’re doing the Iraqis a favour….
And, where farmers manage to somehow stay afloat and avoid becoming captive customers to U.S.-grown and imported food they cannot afford, they’re constantly encouraged to become hamsters in a treadmill — captive customers to U.S. genetically modified, impossible, input-dependent, finite agricultural systems and seeds instead. These are the same colour-by-numbers agricultural systems that are destroying and contaminating top soils and watersheds worldwide.
In the case of Iraq, one of the many tragedies is wheat. Mesopotamia, the area now known as Iraq, is believed to be the first place where wild grasses were domesticated, thousands of years ago, into the wheat we know today. Worldwide, it is said we have over 200,000 varieties of wheat, and it all began in Iraq. The tragedy is that, despite once being self-sufficient in food, Iraq is today importing 80% of even the wheat it consumes.
Most of you will be familiar with Bremer Order 81, an additional ‘bonus’ granted Iraqi farmers, but if not, do read up on it: Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer’s Order 81.
First they eliminate the local farmers, next step is to eliminate the local merchants, to replace them with international super market chains: https://www.permaculturenews.org/2011/03/04/the-ancient-taberna-in-a-future-world/
The invasion of Irak has just started!!!
Heartbreaking
By spreading this knowledge we can help to be part of the solution. Most people think that the invasion was all about the oil… the reality is much deeper, and scarier. Let’s organize against these atrocities and turn back the tides!
This is a crime against humanity, and it is being repeated in many developing nations under different names with the help of IMF and the World Bank. This disgusts me to the core.
This is SO sad. And I can’t think of anything to do to stop this.
Christine
Great informative video – it’s truly a war against Iraqi small farmers. A case of imperialist USA making the world a monoculture. A tragedy.
That’s very well said Brandis, a global monoculture designed by corporations and money power, making all people subservient under their regime.
US Government takes wealth from taxpayers, gives some of it to American farmers in the form of ag subsidies, which lowers the price of food. Some of that food goes to Iraq and artificially lowers the price of food there. Great for giant agribusinesses with government contracts, good for Iraqi food consumers in the short term, pretty crappy for everybody else. I guess we have the Military-Industrial-Ag complex now.
Easy to fix though: abolish the USDA. Oh, and quit starting wars.
great article, thanks for taking the time to put it up and very interesting..so we need on ground solutions and political and social solutions.
Im interested in finding out what are the ten best permaculture onground display sites world wide at the moment.. ones that one could use as a practical example to people to show them that the methodologies work.
I think thse sites could be productive from a number of perspctives..examples of ecosystem regeneration that has been left abandoned and has performed its own evolution ( perhaps the original greening the desert site for Jica)..and of course examples of matured productive sites..producing a range of products..(ie a solution to mainstream ag).. perhaps davids place in victoria and the brookmans place in SA are examples of successfyl small scale projects..
Modern Agriculture practices are atrocious to natural ecosystems, there is a war going on against organic, this is the most blatant case of corporate greed destroying the planet. Permaculture is the best thing human beings can possibly do to live sustainably. I hope the people of this country rise up and realize how monopolized seed companies and genetically modified plants are screwing up our environment.
We need an Environmental revolution !