Page 6 RAIN February /March 1978 □ .. . Already over 22 percent of the total American food , production is under direct corporate control, four fifths of that by contract. Of the vegetables processed in the United . States, 78 percent are produced by farmers under contract and 10 percent by the processors themselves. This means that cor-' porations control 88 percent of the American 'legetable'crop. There is therefore no competitive market to which the individual farmer can turn. He has little choice but to sign up with a corporation. . . . • . . . The contracts they sign, after all, are written by the corporations for the corporations. Jim Hightower reports the asparag~s growers find that their contracts with Del Monte "allow the corporation to decide what part of the crop is 'acceptable.'" In 1972, 8 percent of the asparagus crop was rejected in this way. "With no open market to se11 on," Hightower observes, "farmers literally had to eat that loss." He· goes on to reveal _how the farmers' loss is Del Monte's gain: In many cases, however, Del Monte will buy the rejected asparagus from the farmer-at cut-rate prices. In 1972, the price for "acceptable" canning asparagus was 23¢ a pound. The price for asparagus the corporation found unacceptable was .0005¢ . a pound. Del Monte has sole po\veno decide whether a batch of asparagus is worth 23¢ or .0005¢,.and the contrl!-ct requires the farmer to offer any unacceptable asparagus to Del Monte. If the corpor:ation does not want to buy it, then the farmer can take his rejects elsewhere. B-ut there is nowhere else. Why would Del Monte want to write such a provision into its contract? Because there are windfall profits in those asparagus culls. The farmer may have to give the stuff away to Del Monte, but Del Monte'certainly does ·not give it away to you. Del Monte packages and sells these rejects as aspaPagus soup, asparagu~ cuts and asparagus tips-:--all·drawing a pretty penny at the supermarket. D Foo•d self-reliance depends on mass initiative, not on government directives. Self-reliance means not only mass participation but mass initiative, the initiative of people freed psychologically from dependence on authorities, whether they be landlords or government officials. Mass initiative is the opposite of individual self~seeking. It rests in awakening the confidence of the people that only through cooperative work in which all partake and benefit equally can genuine development occur. People have proved themselves willing to sacrifice and work hard for future reward, when they can see that all are sacrificing equally. Thus equality is a necessary prerequisite for mass initiative. In countries with great inequalities in wealth and income, appeals for nati_onal sacrifice are correctly perceived by the poor majority as a way for the contn;>lling 1 elite to extract yet more wealth through the extra exertion of the masses. Since self-reliance•pres~pposes equality, government programs that help only a segment of the poor should not be confused with self-reliant policies. They often only increase inequality. Between 1957 and 1970, about one quarter of all smallholders in Malaysia were settled through a government lal).d development scheme. Their income r.ose several times higher than the average peasant household. Yet all other smallholders saw their incomes halved. Self-reliance is not the "project approach" to hu·nger. • Mass initiative, moreover, is the opposite of government managed "developm'ent." If food self-relianc~ is managed from above, people f~el they are working '"for the government," not for themselves. People become "clients," not the motive force. A government policy of simply parceling out land to small farmers is not, for example, self-reli4nt development. Land reform must involve the people themselves who deliberate to decide how the resources are to be used and how disputes are to be resolved. Land reform must not only redistribute land but must be the first step in·the creation of a ma.~s democracy. The process of land reform is as important as the reform itself. :. D .. . Thus the real lessons for us are these: First: We cannot solve the problem of world hunger for other people. They must do that for themselves. We can, . however, work to remove the o,bstacles that ~ake it increasingly difficult for pe9ple everyo/here to take control·of food production and feed themselves. · ' Second:.We should focus on removing those obstacles that are being reinforced today by forces originating in our coun- •try, often in our .name and with our tax money., . Third: We must support people everywher~ already resistin·g forced food dependency and now building self-reliant societies in which the majority of people directly control food~producing resources. Direct financial assistance is im- . portant'as is communicating their very existence to Americans still believing that "people are, too oppressed ~ver to change." Fourth: Working for self-reliance, both on a personal and national level, benefits everyone. Making America less dependent on importing its food and less depende.tlt on pushing our food on others will be a step toward making America "safe for the world." Local self-reliance will make it more difficult for elites, both in the industrial countries and the unqerde~efoped countries, to manipulate prices, wages !l,nd people for their own profit. Self-reliance ,for America means wholesome food available to all, supplied by a healthy domes- • tic agriculture of widely dispersed control. D ·-Tom Bender ·cancer: ·Metaphor for Modern Times; Pet~r Barry.Chowka, ' a three-part special,.March, April 1977:}an. 1978, in EastWe~t Journal, $1 each from: P.O. Box 305 Dover, NJ 07801 , • j While we're on the subject of food and well-being, we should mention this -excellent series of artjcles by Peter Barry Chowka. We're spending more than $800 million per year of our tax money on cancer research. That research has been an almost total failure, except to provide lucrative income ~o the medical/pharmaceutical industry. Although cancer incidence has increased parallel to our introduction of synthetic food •chemicals into our diet and pollutants into our surroundings, cancer preven'tion remains 'a taboo subject ~nd funds remain · concentrated on ineffective treatments. A few minutes of simple logic can exclude almost everything ,except diet as the cause of a majority of cancers, and research done in the 1940s had striking results through limiting intake of fats, c~lories, salt, excess protein and sugar. It also established with mice that a diet restricted to 2/3 of what would be eaten with no· restraints caused caused a significant reduction in incidence of tumors. Is·cancer a dis.ease of self-indulgence? -TB
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