Bellies of the Rich Swell Further on the Back of Hunger
Colin todhunter
Photo by Timur Weber: Pexels
It’s a zero-sum situation. The rich are robbing the poor to swell their coffers – and their bellies.
In April 2022, Oxfam reported a terrifying prospect of more than a quarter of a billion people falling into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 alone.
In its January 2021 report ‘The Inequality Virus’, it also stated that the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn between 18 March and 31 December 2020. Their total wealth then stood at $11.95tn, a 50 per cent increase in just 9.5 months.
According to Oxfam’s analysis, 13 out of the 15 IMF loan programmes negotiated during the second year of COVID required new austerity measures such as taxes on food and fuel or spending cuts that could put vital public services at risk.
Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.
The world’s poorest countries were due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports. Governments across the world are now largely under the control of international creditors after COVID policies resulted in (deliberately) triggering a multi-trillion-dollar global debt crisis.
Meanwhile, oil and gas giants report record-breaking profits.
It’s similar for the world’s biggest agribusiness corporations. They have made more in profits since 2020 than the amount that the UN estimates could cover the basic needs of the world’s most vulnerable.
A February 2023 report by Greenpeace International – Food Injustice 2020-2022 – exposes rampant profiteering at a time when war and lockdowns have contributed to food insecurity across the world.
Twenty corporations in the grain, fertiliser, meat and dairy sectors delivered $53.5 billion to shareholders in the financial years 2020 and 2021. At the same time, the UN estimates that $51.5 billion would be enough to provide food, shelter and lifesaving support for the world’s 230 million most vulnerable people.
Davi Martins, campaigner at Greenpeace International, says that we are witnessing an enormous transfer of wealth to a few rich families that own the global food system. This at a time when the majority of the world population is struggling to make ends meet.
Martins says:
These 20 companies could literally save the world’s 230 million most vulnerable people and have billions of profit left over in spare change. Paying more to shareholders of a few food corporations is just outrageous and immoral.”
Covering the period 2020-2022 when COVID policies were in force and the war in Ukraine had begun, the report looked at the profits of 20 of the biggest agribusiness corporations and how many people have been affected by food insecurity as well as the extreme rise of food prices across the globe.
These ‘hunger profiteers’ exploited crises to gain grotesque profits. They plunged millions into hunger while tightening their grip on the global food system. One of the firms mentioned is Cargill – owned by 14 billionaires.
Together with Archer-Daniels Midland, Bunge and Dreyfus – Cargill controls more than 70% of the world’s grain trade. None of these firms are under no obligation to disclose what they know about global markets, including their own grain stocks.
The table below from the Greenpeace International report listing the 20 firms included in its study:
Greenpeace found that a lack of transparency around the true amounts of grain in storage following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a key factor fuelling speculation on food markets and inflated prices.
Aside from manipulating markets and prices, these corporations also fuel food insecurity by pushing small-scale farmers and local producers out of the system. Smallholder farmers actually feed most of the world, unlike the type of industrial agri-enterprises global agribusiness serves (and sometimes owns).
Global agribusiness corporations never tire of telling policy makers that what they do is essential for feeding the world and ensuring food security. But the opposite is true.
They create or contribute to hunger, illness and malnutrition, displace rural communities, destroy smallholder agriculture, place farmers on seed and chemical treadmills and wreck and pollute ecosystems.
Aside from hollowing out or capturing key institutions to forward their agenda, they misleadingly conflate strengthening and expanding their global supply chains (destroying indigenous systems of production in doing so) with serving the food needs of the world (for insight into these issues, see Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order on the website of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)).
To prevent profiteering on such a grand scale and lessen the vulnerability of food supply and production to shocks (war, energy shortages, etc), a decentralised food system based on short supply chains is required. This would be based on the principles of localisation and strengthening smallholder agriculture. What this means is food sovereign communities in which local people take ownership of seeds, land and water (commonwealth) and manage what is produced and how it is produced.
Governments and policy makers need to act now to protect people from the abuses wrought by giant agribusiness corporations. Greenpeace argues that without regulating and loosening the grip of corporate control on the global food system, current inequities will only deepen further. It adds that we need to change the food system – failure to do so will cost millions of more lives.
The Greenpeace report adds further weight to calls for governments at international, national and local level to put an end to corporate control and monopoly in the food system while instituting an international trade order based on cooperation and human rights instead of competition and coercion.
Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.
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In the past couple of years, traitor governments around the Pacific have ratified the CPTPP treaty, purportedly on free trade but in fact enslavement to trans-national capital. It explicitly prohibits farmers from saving seeds for replanting.
Over 30 years, 60 of the poorest countries paid $550 billion in principal and interest on loans of $540 billion; yet their outstanding debt remained at $523 billion. -John Perkins 2015
No one forces anyone to borrow money.
As soon as everyone accepts that not everyone on the planet is going to have the same standard of living, a lot of hands will stop wringing.
We never should have industrialized the poor areas of the world — south America and especially Africa. The population boom this century will be mostly from Africa, who are overrunning Europe with illegal migration.
Someone please tell Bill Gates to stop sending sanitary birth kits to Africa. That will solve the problem by letting nature take its course.
Another benefit of Brexit. In one of the more shocking hypocrisies of this year so far, Charles 111, King of England – considered to be a strong supporter of organic farming and environmental causes – has given his Royal Assent to a biotechnology ‘innovation’ which will provide an open book for UK firms to alter the genome of animals and plants, so as to create novel engineered species and biotech ‘foods’. In taking this step Charles has committed an open act of betrayal of all bona fide farmers, and particularly of organic farmers. The Genetic Technology Precision Breeding Act 2023 was given the royal go ahead on 23rd March, 2023. * This piece of legislation will, for the time being, be unique to the UK, as such animal and plant biotech deformations are not allowed in the EU and many other countries. A secondary deception relates to the marketing of such… Read more »
This has always been the case; anyone who studies colonialism knows of the “Doctrine of Discovery” (terra nullius or “vacant land”) or indeed that the whole groundtruth of settler-colonial capitalism is that of improvement; “to study nature with the view to command nature” is the prime scientistic principle of capital (according to Bacon, Mill et al); the native or primitive First People who previously occupied the land but did nothing to improve it; the peasant who tilled the common, but did nothing to improve; an so on; “primitive accumulation” (enclosure, eviction, jurisdiction) is predicated on a legal principle (as codification for capital) that nature cannot be owned, per se, only improved with a view to command, dominion, and controlled as in possessed as private property…. So the rich have always got rich on the codification of hunger and the globalisation of poverty; after primitive accumulation comes accumulation by dispossession; the… Read more »
The term high-income country is itself deflection. Most people in such countries either struggle to get by (are miserable) or have hit the bottom.
Charity’s CEO expenses, are nothing compared to the politicians expenses and side hassle some of lot endorse.
All scumbags the lot of them.
Mammon.
Many charities are rotten to the core…says all you need to know about the spiritual condition of mankind.
I have realised that a lot of charities, especially ‘foreign aid’ ones are fronts for political and business interests and money laundering. And that a lot of ‘humanitarians’ are self-serving types who aren’t short of money.
Sounds very cynical but we live in a fallen world.
Prior to the ‘covid’ psyop Australia’s governing party was regarded by the electorate as the better economic managers when compared to all other parties vying for the top job…It’s focus was always on reducing government DEBT…
But the lockdowns required of it to become spendthrift, doling out money to all comers…Even age pensioners got a hefty rise…
My guess is that, come the time when all the government borrowings have to be paid back, the government will nationalise all private housing stock to sell to get the money to pay off the DEBT…
How else could Australians become renters because they (happily) owned nothing ?
Seems OG didn’t like what I said in regards to Oxfam. Off to the spam box you go.
It has been mentioned in a comment further down.
So it has…
I’ve never given much thought to the meaning of the act of voting (never voted in my adult years) and what is implicitly acknowledged in that act beyond the fact that it is a useless act. Today, I’ve stumbled upon an interesting text from Hobbes’ Leviathan on what the meaning of voting is; quite an eye-opener IMO. After enumerating the reasons man should be governed by an outside “Common Power”, reasons gathered – as a good empiricist – from his observations or descriptions of the England of his time partly torn by civil war and without ever going into the reasons that state of affairs itself came about; – that will change later with Hegel and his statement that “he result is nothing without its becoming,” he states that “The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners,… Read more »
This is basic social contract theory as elaborated by Locke et al; in America it’s called “Unitary Executive” — the POTOS is the Executive — who has recently consolidated the sepration of powers (cf the Patriot Act et al); the de jure Head of State is the de facto authority — not necessarily solely, but they usually have some sort of veto power; for instance; Macron is only a joint leader in theory — a “semi-president” co-ruler — I think everybody can see he answers to no-one… (in theory King Charles holds a veto power in the form of withholding the Royal Assent: not that he would ever use it This is why Blair and Bush are not war criminals, legally at least; they are not only above the law — nationally and internationally — they are the law (especially in times of crisis; cf emergency powers, states of exception,… Read more »
Thanks, specially for this: “This is why Blair and Bush are not war criminals, legally at least; they are not only above the law — nationally and internationally — they are the law (especially in times of crisis; cf emergency powers, states of exception, enabling acts and so on).”
I don’t know how many people know that elected representatives are above the law and can do whatever they want without legal consequence for their person. An eye opener really.
Oxfam forgot to mention their revenue was up too, they turned over 400mil. Ah yes, charities, the biggest scam of all. Because the average joe on street could not imagine a bunch of people to be so low that they would use a “charity” as a tax haven/laundromat to cleanse/steel money tax free. Taking advantage of the gullible plebs once more. Oxfams CEO Danny Sriskandarajah (a WEF Young Global Leader) and link to the Gates Foundation according to his wiki, pays himself 121k and thats before he claims “other expenses” on the company credit card. Not to mention the phone, car, office and travel expenses paid for by the “charity” (aka public donations). A that’s just what he declared. When I make a donation I like to know 100% of the money is going to the cause intended. You will say, “well, the people who run the charity have to… Read more »
Further, out of curiosity I just did a little more research on a long list of “charity’s” CEO’s. It’s amazing how many of them are coincidently linked to the WEF and many have been Knighted. Funny how you never see these jobs advertised in the newspaper.
The true charity workers are the ones doing the door knocks and running the shop fronts on behalf of the criminals who run them. These people do the work for FREE. That’s what charity is. When one is willing to do something for another for FREE. No payment, no favour in the bank, no front page spread on the news paper. Free.
Some of the free workers think they are doing God’s work. See the churches as an example of wealth accumulation from the gullible.
Profiteering truly is a crime against humanity.
Govts aren’t going to start representing the people who voted for them or enact laws protecting against predatory entreprenurial practices. There’s no profit in it.
Are we to suspend belief and pretend no govt minister anywhere holds shares in the same hypocritical corporate entities as the rest of the vultures?
“To represent the people” may not be the great thing we’ve always thought. I may be wrong but a government representing the people doesn’t mean the government doing what the people wants; it means that whatever the government does is implicitly agreed upon to be what every person who voted for the government wants.
If this conception of a representative government is correct, it changes everything.
Wealth itself, or prosperity are not the enemy. The stark and unhealthy disparities in its distribution result from theft, largely coordinated by governments which have so proven to be corrupt everywhere that even the viability of republics/democracies is highly questionable now.
Ultimately it falls to our own individual and collective moral fiber to cure this problem, just as it does with every other one. For better or worse, the wait seems to be over where that’s concerned.
Wealth and prosperity are never the enemy of the wealthy and prosperous.
And make no mistake, all of us in the “Western” world are immensely wealthy compared to the laborers who toil all day in a resource environment so that the “West” can bestow upon its citizens the wealth and prosperity inherent in exploitation of others.
That the bestowers keep the lion’s share for themselves doesn’t really change the exploitation dynamic.
’74 four day week. You investing Dollies know Shit!
Bugger-all
If I recall correctly after wandering the net and reading far too much. Aren’t big strings attached to any debt cancellation. Like ownership of your soul?
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/12/15/world/five-ways-bioethicist-wants-change-our-bodies-fight-climate-change/ Dr. S. Matthew Liao, “a bioethicist” has a “dead serious” proposal. He “believes that solving climate change starts with the individual. That’s why he suggests we turn humans into cat-eyed, meat-allergic, semi-genius, hobbit people”. At this point you should really be saying to yourself, “They call us conspiracy theorists and define that as being loony. Meanwhile this bit about transforming everyone into “cat-eyed, meat-allergic, semi-genius, hobbit people” is … sane? Now get a load of this: “There are lots of ideas on the table when it comes to fighting the environmental impact of humans and technology.” “Ideas on the table”? What table? Whose ideas? No matter. Prepare yourself for the humungous howler here: “As we move further and further into a world where there is vast scientific consensus, and a paradoxical public resistance to that idea, these ideas are getting weirder and weirder.” You’d think that the blatant admission… Read more »
Like the rest of them with endless funding Liao’s hubris outweighs his capacity to think straight, he’s mentally ill and doesn’t know it.(maybe he does) These Psychopaths need to be stopped.
Think about all his students, his superiors who employ(ed) and pay him, and all the journalists who obey and admire this guy enough to write about him.
What about them?
I did. Like I think about all the other minions surrounding evil and cheering it on. All of them are to blame. I hope non of them get a free pass when their input is no longer of use.
No government is going to save you. Only we can save ourselves by refusing to comply and refusing to participate in their bullshit vision of society. Shop local, don’t buy new, make do and mend, don’t get in debt, pay in cash, ditch the smartphone.
I agree 100% Bob!
And give TV the flick as well.
Fuck ALL the Government, the Genie is already out of the bottle. Tor and Monero. Become ungovernable.
Sorry Colin, there’s a pile on underway, and I’m joining.
Governments are the ones who were meant to keep the corporate world at arms length from any direct impact on the citizenry. They have utterly failed in that regard and in many respects are entirely indistinguishable from the very corporate identities they are meant to guard us from, vis a vis, government regulatory bodies.
I know you know this.
Much of the above content is quite true, but Oxfam and Greenpeace are just typical fake NGOs with a very dodgy record serving corporate globalist interests. Oxfam was even running sex parties where poor black kids were forced to have sex with animals for food. If they had a shred of integrity, they would have disbanded and closed down after that. It’s the same story with all these fake NGOs. They all serve corporate globalist interests and deserve zero respect and deference. Save The Children was running bogus vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, obtaining intelligence to target US drone strikes wiping out entire villages. The Red Cross received $500 million to provide emergency housing following the Haiti earthquake. All they actually built was 12 scruffy prefabs. Where the money goes, nobody knows. They seem to have been actively involved with the Clinton child trafficking ring. In Syria, they transported… Read more »
Exactly right. Well done Paul, every single word you wrote is true. On the spot.
But unfortunately it shows again and again that hypocrites and liars are a 4/5 majority of us.
What should our little team do in this mess?
I dont buy Catherine’s “use cash on fridays”, other proposals as “make your own garden”, “stop borrowing money from blackstone”, “make a poster and walk around capitol hill”.
Good question, E. I wish I had an equally good answer. Firstly, it’s not an excuse for tight fistedness. There are charities that are worth supporting, particularly smaller local ones, food banks, raising money for local schools, churches, hospitals and hospices. I’ve seen myself the good they do to help individuals, though it sometimes seems like a drop in the ocean. Generally speaking, the smaller the better. The only large charity I think worth supporting is the Salvation Army. Even charities like Guide Dogs for the Blind are highly dubious, though that might surprise some. If you ever see the recruitment pages of the Guardian, it is full of charity fund raising jobs, £50k plus car plus benefits. And there are foreign charities abroad worth supporting. I supported one I visited in Africa building and running a primary school. Local families could not afford 20p a week school fees or… Read more »
Thanks for your endorsement 🙂
This is a woefully naive statement when governments are corporations themselves. here is an example from dun&bradstreet.
The ‘citizens’ have also been fraudulently converted (ie. without informed consent) into ‘legal fictions’ to secure the private Central Bank loans that must be paid back with interest..
Practically everything has been moved into the commercial jurisdiction overseen by the judiciary (private BAR members), who also may be found here on dun&bradstreet.
As soon as naive parents sign the childs birth certificate it is doomed and in the grip of the parasite class until death.
Disagree.
A child has an universal right to know who is his/hers father and mother, its birth place and belonging, and the father and mother has the right to know their child
.
This can only be done by some society recognized formality.
Please remember the Bankers want us to believe the whole world and our whole life is about excel sheets and their stupid usury loans and fiat money. Its not.
My regrets. We have other concerns in our lives than banks.
My comment had nothing to do with the child knowing who his / her parents are. It’s the fact the birth certificate signs you into corporate bondage. While many don’t know this because it’s a corporate con would best look how to break that arrangement if they value their children or themselves as parents.
How exactly does this corporate bondage work?
Forgive my skepticism; but when something comes along which defies logic – such as merely signing a birth certificate (and that may not be the case in every state, province, etc.) – it requires more than simply word of mouth.
Isn’t it usually a public figure, like Clerk of Court, who signs birth certificates (at least here in the USA)? And not the parents?
A registrar signs it as well as parent. And so is born your legal fiction – your ‘person’. That person is who the ‘authorities’ (corporations) deal with via contract law. It’s the only way they can ‘legally’ interact with you. They would have no power over you in common law.
Sorry. Your links fail to search the relevant list. Here’s a list I downloaded years ago: > Dun & Bradstreet registered numbers: Agencies: United States Government – 052714196 US Department of Defense (DOD)-030421397 US Department of the Treasury-026661067 US Department of Justice (DOJ)-011669674 US Department of State-026276622 US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)-Office of the Secretary-112463521 US Department of Education-944419592 US Department of Energy-932010320 US Department of Homeland Security-932394187 US Department of the Interior-020949010 US Department of Labor-029536183 US Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD)-Office of the Secretary-030945779 US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)-931691211 US Transportation Security Administration (TSA)-050297655 US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-056622429 Bureau of Customs & Border Protection (CBP)-796730922 Federal Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE)-130221646 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-057944910 National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)-003259074 National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-079933920 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-364281923 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-037751583 Federal… Read more »
In due course (and not too far away) individuals will have their debts wiped clean, their credit scores duly applied and will be provided with a UBI to stay at home, rent/hire what they need, own nothing, be happy and betrothed to their government.
Similarly, whole countries will have their debts cleared on the basis that the World Bank/WEF/UN/etc etc will provide them with seeds, food, pharmaceuticals etc as long as they toe the line…….a line that may well include “population control”.
Perhaps there’d be fewer people in extreme poverty if Oxfam spent their funds helping them instead of producing a woke dictionary.
https://twitter.com/ianbrown/status/1618697906948837377/photo/1
Nothing has happened in 50 years. Same picture, same scams, same text.
That’s why you have to not to be diverted by domestic propagandist “Bleeding Heart Propaganda”.
”Governments and policy makers need to act now to protect people from the abuses wrought by giant agribusiness corporations.” Governments and policy makers have brought these abuses on people. They are in the business of saving the World Economy (= WE). The cost of covid was estimated 11 trillion dollars by the WEF in October 2020. Other estimations ranged at the same time from 10 to 22 trillion US dollars, perhaps in the USA alone. It’s not cheap to kill the poor and make the rich richer. But money is no problem because it is made out of thin air by banks, simply putting numbers as a loan on a computer. Easy. The money system in this world includes governments and policy makers. They are killing people. And those criminally insane are planning to offer their solutions to the problems that they caused. Problems like poverty and malnutrition. Their solution… Read more »
Present governments are controlled by these greedy scumbags. Global taxation is required on all billionaires / trillionaires to remove the majority of their ill gotten gains. Just dreaming.
No can’t do that your part of global conglomerates you’ll definitely be below zero. They are Bank 24/7 so are you, you buy sell trade every day and night your alive They are not. Your Card is Business, just figured that out?
Your commercialised property of Corporations that frettted over personal priivacy while infiltrating privacy of other Citizens.
It isn’t only the corporations/governments; it’s our everyday participation to the system of all of us. Capital and the State are nothing without us. A worldwide withdrawal from the prevailing economic practices is needed. Easier said than done, specially if there are still people who think it’s incompetence, mismanagement, misallocation of ressources, etc so just replace this set of figures by others… And the rest of us tend to believe this discourse and say: “Yeah let’s hang this and that one [and bring to office this and that other one.]” The State may even spare us the trouble and stage trials where this replacement is done to calm the population down.
So, sadly this has to go on until all the consciences are radically changed.
Never ascribe to incompetence that which can be equally or more rationally explained by malevolence.
Apparently, historians can’t agree that Marie Antoinette actually said: ‘Let them eat cake’ but then she, and her slimy ilk, don’t need to make such arrogant statements.
We all know what those Turds are thinking anyway. It’s written all over their smirking faces and reflected in their warmongering, bloodthirsty, self- serving policies.
The interesting thing about Marie Antoinette’s comment, is that she wasn’t being mean or facetious . Ms Antoinette was so out of touch with reality, she thought the peasants should simply shift their baking habits toward cakes rather than bread. No clue that the problem was lack of wheat…
The quote is often misinterpreted.
..inside caked bread ovens.. no matter we were all illiterate simpletons back then especially colonial wogs.
“Governments and policy makers need to act now to protect people from the abuses wrought by giant agribusiness corporations.”
In other words the people (and systems) who helped these corporations get where they are (and benefited from the kickbacks which is the only reason they helped them) are now supposed to stop them and fix everything. Not a solution I have any faith in I’m afraid. Not even if you ask them really really nicely. Did you see what the 2023 budget looked like in the UK? All about helping those in need it was not, by any stretch of the imagination.
Just as the pharma ghouls pumped out lethal “vaccines” to “save” people from a non-existent threat, the food vultures now want to transfer eating habits over to poisonous insect intake.
Or cancer cells, yay!