The 1930s Dust Bowl presaged today’s global ecological crises. Hannah Holleman’s brilliant new book shows how and why capital destroys the soil that all life depends on.

The 1930s Dust Bowl presaged today’s global ecological crises. Hannah Holleman’s brilliant new book shows how and why capital destroys the soil that all life depends on.
Agroecology can free farmers from dependency, manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity. It is resisted by giant corporations that profit from the status quo.
World Bank report shows massive depletion of Africa’s natural wealth by transnational corporations. Only mass action can block the extractivist plunder
Refinery workers strike and class struggle environmentalism … Fossil fuel divestment … Kenyan government aims to dispossess Maasai … Small farmers versus big agriculture
Largest anti-fracking demo in U.S. history … Environmental justice, tar sands, and indigenous rights … Corporate land grabs in Pakistan … How international investment rules undermine agrarian justice … Climate scientists are right about how hot the planet is going to get
Greening Malthus … The Cuban Revolution and its economic reforms; … 2 degree target means 80% of coal is unburnable … People pushed out of Ethiopia’s fertile farmland … The death of international development
Around the world, giant agribusinesses are displacing the most productive farms. Only by returning land to small farmers can we feed the world’s hungry.
Sierra Leone has experienced a mass influx of foreign investors acquiring large tracts of arable and forest land for agriculture and mining
Obama proposes a vast expansion of fracking on public and tribal lands — under rules written by the drilling industry
Most land grabs occur in the world’s most food-insecure countries. Profit-driven agriculture means more food for the wealthy and well-fed, and less for the poor and hungry
National Peasants Union: “We vehemently condemn any initiative which aims to resettle communities and expropriate the land of peasants to give way to mega farming projects for monocrop production”
In many of the countries where millions are starving, multinationals and foreign governments have taken over prime land for export crops, squeezing out small farmers
This trend is now a major driver of land grabbing globally, and poses a significant threat to the world’s indigenous communities, farmers and local food production systems, as well as to precious water, forests, biodiversity, critical ecosystems and climate change.
The poorest people in the global South are losing access to essential land and resources as a result of giant land deals, most of which are for biofuel production, not food. (more…)
Climate smart agriculture will put a dollar value on the carbon in African dirt, so it can be bought and sold on the markets, and polluters can then buy dirt offsets that will allow them to continue to pollute! (more…)
The growing wave of privatization of land in Africa has made its precarious agricultural and food system even more vulnerable (more…)
The massive acquisition of agricultural land by transnational companies that has been taking place over the past years has multiplied farmer evictions and reduced the capacity of many African, Asian and Latin American countries and communities to feed themselves. (more…)
“These land wars have serious consequences for our nation’s democracy, our peace and our ecology, our food security and rural livelihoods. The land wars must stop if India is to survive ecologically and democratically.” (more…)
Excerpts from a briefing by the African Biodiversity Network, Biofuelwatch, Carbon Trade Watch, the Gaia Foundation and the Timberwatch Coalition. (more…)
Food is a natural right and agricultural products should not be treated as commodities whose ultimate purpose is the generation of business profits rather than meeting needs of the people