Page 8 RAIN April 1980 DOMESTIC The Wheel of Fortune (1976), 72 pp., from: The Center for Rural Affairs P.O. Box 405 Walthill, NE 68067 The Wheel of Fortune tells the story of yet another technology's ability to determine the fate of lives and land regardless of the consequences. The center pivotal irrigation system has had a dramatic effect on increased crop production in Nebraska. It has also introduced what could be termed "speculative farming" on a grand scale. Land appreciation and tax. breaks have attracted absentee and multiple/corporate investors faster than The Center for Rural Affairs can document them. The absentee owner in ruraJ America and the foreign investor in the Third World show the same careless waste of land and resources. The pivotal Irrigation system is being used to produce CfOPS on land which the Soil Conservation Service has classified unsuitable for farming because of its high susceptibility to wind cr-osion. Land used in Ihis way will produce crops for a few years, bu t unless allowed to lay fallow the topsoil will blow away. The majority of these farms is controlled by absentee owners. "ExpJoitive short-term use of farm land has led the authors to compare absentee owners in Nebraska to mining in Appalachia. The Wh eel of Fortune is a particularly sensitive and well-researched report. The Center for Rural Affairs puts out The New Land Review, an equal! y well-done and accurate periodical ($.50 donation per copy). - KS Southern Profiles: Appropriate Technology in the Southeast, by Jeff Tiller and Dennis Creech, 1980, $3.00, from: Georgia Institute of Technology Engineering Experiment Station Atlanta, GA 30332 This directory, financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is an example of tax money well spent. The listings include organizations, individuals, films and publrcations in such broadly defined a.t. fields as food, energy, waste & water utilization, and health. It describes activities, presents points of view, and even acFORIEGN The Growth ofHunger: A New Politics ofAgriculture, by Rene Dumont and Nicholas Cohen, 1980, 213 pp., $7.95 from: Marion Boyers Inc. 99 Main Street Salem, NH The Growth of Hunger addresses all peoples' right to food. The CIA's position is, "As custodian of the bulk of the world's exportable grains, the U.s. might regain primacy in world affairs." On the international market food is viewed as a commodity. As a result of this attitude tllward food, people go hungry while transnational corporations gain revenues from luxury ('rops. A new politics of agriculturl' would suggest that staple grains be exempted from inflationary market manipulations. Price stabilization has been continually squelched by agri-powers at World Food Confe rences . Dumont and Cohen see appropriate agriculture as the origin of a country's political and social well-being. A self-reliant economy depends not on agribusiness capital but decentralized land reform with government-assisted credit and village-based appropriate technology. As world agriculture currently stands, the broad political and economic changes that would lead toward a new polities of agriculture seem out of reach. However ... "there is a potential for revoJution within the populace of the hungry and oppressed whIch cannot be ignored. " r hl' Gro'tI.>th of Hunger is part of an Ideas in Progress series published by Dumont and Cohen. Authors such as Ivan Illich, Wilham Leiss, Godfrey Boyle, Robert L. Heilbroner and Henry Skolimowski, experts in ecology, health, economics and energy, " rethink the underlying concepts of many of our leading institutions and provide alternatives." - KS cesses fu nding sources. It's an exhaustive resource directory. perhaps the best regional guide I've seen. One criticism-the access mfo for RA IN is over a year old. I wonder if that's true for other listmgs. - cc Southern A.R.C: Appalachian Resource Catalogue, 1979, $4.00 from: Southern A.R.C. Box71-A Warne, NC 28909 ThISis not really the same sort of directory as SO l/ them Profiles although some overlap does occur. Perhaps the funding of each of them has defined their perspective. SO ll them Profile5 has the luxury of independent financing while Southern A.R.C seems to be at least in part dependent on advertising. "The Southern A.R.C is a network to connect you with the prodijcts (italics mine) and services" of the Appalachian region. It's more difficult to utilize as a resource guide than is SOLI them Profiles, but then its intention is broader. The A. R. C is meant "as a directory, guide, or as an enjoyable book to read." Its index retrieves information sometimes lost in the bulk of the book, bUI the bulk or the book is indeed enjoyable. -CC ICS "Agribusiness Targets Latin America," January-February 1978 issue of NACLA-Reports, bi-monthly, $l1/year, from: North American Congress on Latin America 46419th St., Oakland, CA 94612 North American Congress on Latin America has been in touch with the politkal struggles of Latin Americans for eleven years. Agribusiness Ta rgets Latin America offers five articles that describe the changing face of transnational agribusiness. No longer satisfied with cash crops such as tea, bananas, coffee and sugar, U.S. corporations have raken a further plunge into Third World C('onomics. Low cost production (cheap land. labor and materials) has accelerated expansion and investment into non-traditional agri-sectors such as beef and vegetables, as wel! as many manufacturing and processing industries. NACLA describes the power of tra05na
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