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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 182 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
May I take issue with a point made by Chris Nineham (October SR) on the benefits of the ‘green revolution’ and his argument that modern technology is not in itself destructive. This misses the point that the ‘green revolution’ was designed by agribusiness capital to drive small farmers off the land and make the remainder dependent on expensive fertilisers and high-tech inputs. The result has been more famine as the victims have been driven into poverty and destitution rather than liberation from peasant drudgery.
Market economics and not technology has always been the main limiting factor to food production. During the great Irish famines of the 19th century, Ireland exported four times the food it needed to pay the landlords’ rents. The famines were not caused by the technical problem of potato blight. Likewise it was not the introduction of the tractor but the partial redistribution of the land following the magnificent struggles of the land war which did most to liberate the small farmers.
Nowadays, in the midst of famine, Lonrho boasts of the profits it makes exporting food from Africa, and in Europe the EC pays farmers to set aside land and poison it, while the children of the small farmers emigrate from here in search of work.
What we need is a red revolution, not a green one.
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Kevin Mannerings |
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