By Alex Newman
Article Source
South Africa
Perhaps nowhere has the war on farmers been as brutal as South Africa, still known as the breadbasket of Africa. For decades, barbaric “farm attacks” and unimaginably gruesome murders have left thousands of farmers and their family members dead. Then-South African President Jacob Zuma and other political leaders routinely encouraged the carnage. Among other absurdities, they sing “struggle” songs with lyrics such as “kill the farmer” and “bring me my machine gun, we’re going to shoot the farmer.” The horror got so bad that even President Donald Trump and Fox News host Tucker Carlson publicly addressed the mass killings of South African farmers encouraged by government and the ruling party. A leading expert on genocide warned a decade ago that the attacks were being incited by government and appeared to be genocidal.
Meanwhile, race-mongering authorities continue to threaten “expropriation without compensation” of farms and ranches under the guise of “land reform,” part of the regime’s “National Democratic Revolution.” While black farm workers are occasionally killed, the vast majority of the farm-murder victims and commercial farmers are Afrikaner descendants of Dutch and other Northern-Western European Protestants. The escalating attacks and policy uncertainty threaten to turn the nation into a replica of neighboring Zimbabwe, which went from a major food exporter to famine conditions and dependence on foreign food aid. The South African Communist Party, which rules South Africa in a coalition with the Communist-dominated African National Congress, is a key player in the war on that nation’s highly productive farmers.
China
Under the guise of improving agricultural efficiency and the environment and alleviating poverty, the mass-murdering Communist Chinese dictatorship is working to force over 250 million peasants off their farms and into mega-cities by 2026. Countless homes and even entire farming villages have already been demolished, and many more are slated for destruction in the years ahead. The regime then sells the land to regime-backed corporate interests seeking to build gigantic mega-farms or other projects. Dubbed the “National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020),” the brutal regime’s scheme also seeks to force rural people into highly controlled, strictly surveilled mega-metropolises. “The intent is to pull these people out of very small villages and put them into these new, concentrated communities,” explained Occidental College Professor Alexander Day, who studies Beijing’s rural policies. “It also allows for the development of land.”
The destruction of rural villages has been going on for decades. Starting in 2003, for example, the province of Zhejiang began the process of “merging” more than 25,000 small villages. While the regime claims it seeks to secure “voluntary” cooperation of the targeted farmers and peasants, in practice, families and whole communities are being forcibly evicted from their farms at gunpoint, even if their ancestors lived there for centuries. The New American first reported on this plan in 2013, long before most of the media picked up on it. More than a few critics pointed to parallels with Mao Tse-tung’s “Great Leap Forward,” an effort to “modernize” the nation and its agricultural production that resulted in a catastrophic famine and many millions of deaths. But the carnage continues as China’s ancient small farms are increasingly crushed by the powerful regime.
Brazil
Until conservative Jair Bolsonaro took the Brazilian presidency in 2019 and started pushing back totalitarian forces, the United Nations-backed war on farmers was raging in one of the world’s top agricultural powerhouses. Perhaps the most extreme example of this war was when federal military and police officials, some of them wearing UN insignia, forcibly wiped entire farming communities off the map in the Mato Grosso region. The pretext: Handing hundreds of thousands of rich agricultural acres of land to a small group of native Indians the government claimed once lived there — some of whom publicly said their people never lived in that region or even in that ecosystem.
Citing a series of global agreements, the UN has been very vocally pressuring governments — especially in the Western Hemisphere — to “return” lands to aboriginal peoples. But experts suggested something much more sinister was afoot. “This is just one more case among many,” explained the late anti-communist Brazilian writer and philosopher Professor Olavo de Carvalho, a key advisor to Bolsonaro, in an interview with The New American at the time. “The policy of Brazil’s leftist government is to dismantle the country to deliver it all to ‘native reserves,’ which are nothing more than instruments of billionaire foreign Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).” At the same time, major corporate industrial farms backed by international businesses have been crushing smaller competitors, diverting water supplies, and killing off independent production.
Sri Lanka
The results of the war on farmers in Sri Lanka are now widely known around the world: Mass hunger, a collapse in food production, violent riots, and the overthrow of the entire regime. What is less well-known is the international nexus and the specific UN-backed policies that destroyed the nation’s once-productive agricultural sector and bankrupted countless farmers. In short, efforts to impose “sustainable” farming on the nation, which included a ban on commercial fertilizers and pesticides, were supposed to make Sri Lanka a mecca of organic food production and sustainability.
It was supposed to be a model for the world. In fact, the now-ousted “president,” Gotabaya Rajapaksa, boasted of his schemes at the UN COP26 climate summit just months before the fruit became obvious for all to see. “Sri Lanka recently restricted the imports of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weedicides due to public health concerns, water contamination, soil degradation, and biodiversity impacts,” Rajapaksa bragged, earning international acclaim from governments, NGOs, celebrities, and other global green “elites.” “Although opposed by entrenched lobbies, this has created opportunities for innovation and investment into organic agriculture that will be healthier and more sustainable in future.”
Far from producing “innovation,” “investment,” or a “healthier” future, the policies produced a cataclysm that is continuing to cause hunger among virtually the entire population. The policies were actually reversed fairly quickly, but the damage had been done: Nine in 10 families are skipping meals, the government is officially bankrupt, and farmers across the nation have been driven to bankruptcy. Amid shortages of fuel, medicine, and food, it got so bad that citizens invaded the presidential palace and chased the nation’s unpopular socialist ruler out of the country. Now, the IMF is coming to the “rescue” with a plan that is expected to allow major foreign agri-businesses and Communist Chinese interests to come in and pick up farms, land, and other assets on the cheap.
Canada
Following the lead of Dutch authorities and UN sustainability schemes, the Canadian government is accelerating its war against farmers under the guise of saving the “climate” and reducing nitrogen emissions by further restricting fertilizer. Canada, one of the world’s major food exporters, was once recognized for its critical role in feeding the Allies and helping to win World War II. Now, the Justin Trudeau government seems determined to undermine not just food production but other sectors critical to food production, including energy.
In late July, Trudeau’s government doubled down on unilateral mandates for provincial governments, forcing farmers to reduce fertilizer emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Provincial authorities responded in late July by warning of devastation. “We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” said Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture David Marit, noting that federal authorities had refused to even discuss the matter with provincial leaders and farmers. “The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.” Meanwhile, Alberta Minister of Agriculture Nate Horner warned of food shortages. “The world is looking for Canada to increase production and be a solution to global food shortages,” he said. “The federal government needs to display that they understand this.”
Already, trade groups and associations representing the agricultural sector are warning that the policies would devastate farmers, too, causing massive reductions in profitability and income that could force many out of business entirely. Multiple critics of the policy suggested that was the goal: bankrupt independent farmers so their land can be gobbled up by billionaires and Big Business while intensifying the serious food shortages already developing around the world.
British Isles
In Ireland, Britain, and other nations in the British Isles, a variety of government “sustainability” schemes are underway that are expected to result in a massive decline in agricultural output. In Ireland, authorities announced that farmers would be forced to slash emissions of “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide by 25 percent. By 2030, to comply with global targets agreed to at the UN, the “binding sectoral targets” purport to require more than a 50-percent reduction from current levels. “This is a potentially devastating blow for Irish farming and the rural economy,” said Irish Farmers’ Association chief Tim Cullinan. Other agricultural organizations warned that the mandates would bankrupt farms across the nation. President Pat McCormack with the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association warned that the scheme would make “whole classes of farms unviable.” In particular, he said, the targets would “undermine the viability” of the family farm. Of course, it will also mean drastic reductions in the size of livestock herds. Predictably, the environmentalist lobby, apparently oblivious to the need for food, demanded even larger cuts, complaining that the agricultural sector produces outsized emissions of CO2 relative to its portion of the nation’s GDP.
In England, meanwhile, authorities recently began offering huge tax-funded payments to farmers who agree to stop farming so their land can be transferred away or planted “with trees under a woodland creation scheme,” as the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs put it. Under the guise of fighting “climate change,” politicians and government-funded environmental groups are working on similar policies to undermine agricultural production in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland as well.
The Netherlands
Unlike many of the fronts in the war on farmers that have emerged quietly and out of the public eye, an historic uprising by Dutch producers involving blocking highways with tractors and spraying government buildings with animal manure gained worldwide attention. The Dutch are among the most productive farmers in the world, with their tiny nation second only to the United States in agricultural exports by value. But now, government wants to quash that. Under the guise of solving an alleged “nitrogen” problem, Dutch authorities are working to crush much of the nation’s agricultural sector.
Officials claim the goal is to reduce ammonia emissions to protect the environment in compliance with EU and UN agreements. To do that, drastic limits have been ordered for farmers that will force countless family farms to shut down forever as massive numbers of cows and other animals are culled. Many of the farms — perhaps a third or more — are set to be expropriated by the government. “The expropriation plans of the cabinet are a downright declaration of war on the agricultural sector,” Dutch Member of Parliament Gideon van Meijeren with the Forum for Democracy party was quoted as saying by De Dagelijkse Standaard. “Under false pretenses, farmers are being robbed of their land, centuries-old farms are being demolished and farmers’ families are being totally destroyed.”
Other lawmakers have pointed out that the government is hoping to use the former farms to build housing for the growing number of Africans and Middle Easterners being imported by authorities. The World Economic Forum has also emerged as a key player in the saga. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte boasted to the WEF last year that the Netherlands would host the “Global Coordinating Secretariat of the World Economic Food Innovation Hubs.” In other words, Dutch farmers are the canary in the coal mine for agricultural producers around the world.
The United States
The war on small farmers and ranchers has been raging in the United States for many years under various pretexts, ranging from protecting endangered species and preserving habitats to — ironically — “helping” farmers. Consider the Bundy Ranch fiasco. After decades of government driving ranchers off the land, the Bundy family operated the last major cattle ranch in southeastern Nevada. Under the guise of “protecting” a supposedly endangered desert tortoise, the family was ordered in the 1990s by the federal government to limit the grazing of cows across lands they had been using since the 1800s, potentially destroying the family ranch. Naturally, Bundy, pointing to the constitutions of Nevada and the United States, refused to submit. And so, the federal government showed up with heavy weapons to force the issue and began rounding up his cattle. If it had not been for the intervention of concerned (and heavily armed) citizens from across the nation, there would be no more Bundy ranch and no more cattle ranches at all in that area of Nevada. But it is hardly an isolated phenomenon. In fact, cattle ranchers across the country have told The New American about how Big Business and Big Government are colluding to crush them.
And now, the war is going into overdrive. Just this year, the Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new rule to force public companies to disclose their “environmental, social, and corporate governance” metrics along with reporting their “emissions.” Known as “Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors,” the regulations apply to “upstream” and “downstream” emissions, meaning any farm doing business with a public company would have to find a way to track all its “emissions” so they could be reported to the SEC. Farm associations and more than 115 members of Congress on both sides of the aisle pointed out that the plan would literally bankrupt owners of small and medium-size farms. “The SEC has clearly overstepped its bounds and proposed a rule that would have devastating effects on our farmers,” Congressman John Rose (R-Tenn.), who wrote the letter to the SEC boss, said in a statement. “They should listen to farmers and reverse this terrible proposal before putting our entire nationwide supply of safe and affordable food and agricultural products at risk.”
At the same time, dozens of critical food-processing facilities have mysteriously blown up or burned down in recent months. And economic sanctions on various nations, combined with unprecedented decisions by railway operators to limit shipments, are causing drastic shortages of fertilizer.
Top U.S. officials seem overjoyed at the pain being caused. USAID administrator Samantha Power, for instance, sounded very pleased with the escalating global fertilizer shortages that are expected to produce widespread food shortages worldwide. “Fertilizer shortages are real now,” she said. “As a result, we’re working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost, and this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually…. Never let a crisis go to waste.” Then-U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger contemplated in the early 1970s using food as a weapon of foreign policy to get governments to limit population. It seems the tactic remains in vogue among the ruling class.
