At present, only 10% of the value added in agriculture is actually added on the farm. About 40% of the value is added in creating the inputs (fertilizer, machinery, seeds, hired labor, fuel, pesticides, etc.), and 50% is added in processing, transportation and exchange after the farm commodities leave the farm gate...
Tag - agriculture
This article will first provide a discussion of the conditions in Nicaragua following the revolution. The steps taken to reconstruct the economy, particularly those relevant to the agricultural sector, will be outlined, and we will then describe the current structure and performance of this sector.
The two scenarios just developed were (1) science as it is – researchers engaged in basic and applied research aimed at the mechanization of the tomato harvest – and (2) science as it could be – researchers engaged in basic and applied research aimed at the improvement of farmworkers' jobs. The first is science in...
The following is the concluding half of a two-part article. The first part appeared in the previous issue of SftP, May/June 1979 issue.
The People's Republic of China has received tremendous publicity during the last six months, and deservedly so. The Chinese have embarked on an extremely ambitious program of modernization of their entire society and they have begun to look more outward as they seek to import advanced, Western technology. There are...
Statements like: "the 'superbug' that last year destroyed $45 million worth of cotton is now attacking the nation's 42,000-acre supply of winter lettuce, destroying 10% to 20% of the early plantings'' and "It's threatening maybe 50% of the crop and if we don't get some kind of control, lettuce could go up to $2 a head"
The blatant use of food as a weapon of control and manipulation by US imperialism is surprisingly openly discussed by capitalists and their policy makers. In the words of Earl Butz, past US Secretary of Agriculture: "Food is a weapon. It is one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit."
The most surprising fact about agriculture today is that sometimes people have enough food, that hunger is not more widespread than it is. This is surprising because in most of the world today, food production is not undertaken to feed people, food does not flow from well-fed areas to hungry areas; nor do fluctuations...
This year I have been growing vegetables in my backyard, and when I can, baking my own bread. While a sense of back-to-the-earth may be a part of my motivations, my vegetable garden is also, in a way, my personal protest against capitalism. I have come to realize that foods are corporate products, not grown to feed...
SESPA speakers pointed out that politically and economically the green revolution represents a capitalist incursion into Third World markets as well as an attempt to secure the Third world politically for the West. We then attempted to show how the imperialist goal of the funding organizations created great strictures...