agriculture
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in retail and the food industry around the world.
Resisting work in harvest time
Tad, a combine driver, recounts sabotaging machines in order to get a break from work on Texas farms.
I got a job with a custom cutter, the people who follow the wheat harvest from Texas on up to North Dakota every summer. The combines we were using were a new model series on loan from International Harvester. A fleet of eight or ten of us went along in a big row through the fields and checked out the new models to see how they were performing.
New Zealand Dairy Workers Locked Out
New Zealand company Open Country Cheese, part-owned by Talleys and tied to various National Party MPs via New Zealand's Dairy Investment Fund and Kaimai, is fighting dirty in an attempt to break workers seeking a collective agreement with basic redundancy and transfer of undertakings protection.
From Aotearoa Indymedia:
Revolution In The Air: The Historical Significance Of The Green Corn Rebellion
Originally published in http://www.oklahomarevelator.com/ republished courtesy of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The year of the Green Corn Rebellion, 1917, was a tumultuous year. The war among the imperialist European states had been raging for three years when President Woodrow Wilson ordered U.S. troops to join the fray in April 1917.
Goldacre: 'Argument is about capitalism, not food '
Ben Goldacre points to the analogies between the 'organic' food argument and the BigPharma vs homeopathy/'alternative medicine' - mainly that all niches will be filled under capitalism.
Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame, reports on the Soil Association's response a recent Food Standards Agency (FSA) report on organic food. Goldacre says the FSA's report shows "that organic food is no better than normal food, in terms of composition, or health benefits".
The political economy of hybrid corn
Marxist geneticist Richard Lewontin and economist Jean-Pierre Berlan discuss the economics of and role of capital in the production of hybrid corn. This article follows their 'Technology, research, and the penetration of capital: the case of U.S. agriculture' article.
Source: Monthly Review, July-August, 1986 by Jean-Pierre Berlan, R.C. Lewontin
Technology, research, and the penetration of capital: the case of U.S. agriculture
Economist Jean-Pierre Berlan and marxist geneticist Richard Lewontin reveal the politics and economics behind 1980s US agribusiness.
Source: Monthly Review, July-August, 1986 by R.C. Lewontin, Jean-Pierre Berlan
The theming of the countryside
The following article, completed in December 2005, is based on the experience of a relatively short stint living in the rural West Country. This will account for some of its limits. For example, conditions in different areas will vary. It is for others who know what is missing here to fill the gaps, for themselves and others, in their own ways.
the theming of the countryside...
. . . coming home to roost . . .
Notes on rural gentrification and class relationships in the countryside: the future of rural living.
Cretan farmers march in Athens in midst of political meltdown
Thousands of farmers from Crete marched in the Greek capital under torrential rain demanding financial help in midst of political meltdown
Cretan farmers came by boat for a second time this year to Athens to protest against government neglect of their sector at the time that the Ministry of Agriculture is dedicating some 500million Euro help package to lift problems caused by the global economic crisis in other agricultural areas of the country.
Sugar workers strike against bosses and union, striking airport workers fired in Guyana
Guyanese sugar workers have taken wildcat action against a disappointing pay award and their union's attempt to take a larger cut from it. Meanwhile, Guyana's Minister of Transport and Hydraulics Robeson Benn has fired 15 air traffic controllers who had been on strike for a week.
Operations at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Wales Estate were at a standstill for the second day in a row, when approximately 100 workers of the estate staged a strike, this time protesting against 0.79 percent of the Annual Production Incentive (API) being contributed to the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union’s (GAWU) funds.
Nationwide general strike in India
The nationwide general strike in India has affected West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura almost completely and other States partially with industrial establishments remaining closed across the country and the functioning of the public sector banks was hit at most places.
“The strike was spontaneous with eight crore people participating in it. It is an expression of deep indignation of the masses against the pernicious economic and labour policies of the United Progressive Alliance government,” Gurudas Dasgupta, general secretary of the All-India Trade Union Congress, told reporters.
