Subjects Archives: Agriculture

Paper delivered at the plenary session of the 2009 National Conference of the Philippine Sociological Society held at the PSSC Building on 16 October 2009 Why does the ideology of neoliberalism still exercise such influence in the Philippines despite the challenges it has faced from both the Asian and now global financial crisis? This paper […]

The Maoist movement in India is a direct consequence of the tragedy of India ruled by her big bourgeoisie and governed by parties co-opted by that class-fraction.  The movement now threatens the accumulation of capital in its areas of influence, prompting the Indian state to intensify its barbaric counter-insurgency strategy to throttle it.  In trying […]

  Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Shevardnadze: In the country and in the provinces they created authoritative organizations for reconciliation.  They are working actively.  There is a special committee for refugees.  Many [rebel] bands — although they are not big — stopped armed struggle.  Najib leaves a very good impression.  However, not everybody supports him, […]

  Author’s Note: This story was recently posted on CounterPunch.   Here I have corrected a couple of errors pointed out by readers.  The essay is taken from my book, In and Out of the Working Class.  I worked for the United Farm Workers Union during a sabbatical leave in the winter of 1977.   I […]

Analytical Monthly Review On Monday, October 12th, it was reported that Manmohan Singh — despite the request of air chief marshal P. V. Naik to permit IAF personnel in helicopters to attack inhabitants of the hilly regions — had announced that the armed forces would not be deployed against the domestic left-wing opponents of the […]

BAHAWALPUR, 22 September 2009 (IRIN) — Fears have been raised of a possible increase in food insecurity in Pakistan if a deal to lease out 202,342.8 hectares of farmland to Saudi Arabia goes ahead. Talks are reportedly under way between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to finalize an agreement.  The land, to be acquired in all […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its September 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. We now face the immediate need of a qualitative change in our most fundamental economic relationship — delivery of food supply. The problem is not the variability of […]

Bholar Basti, a water-logged slum in Dhaka city, accommodates more than 30,000 people, most of them victims of river erosion, floods, and other natural disasters.  ©Shamsuddin Ahmed/IRIN DAKAR, 1 September 2009 (IRIN) – Current UN cost estimates for climate change adaptation are too low and this could thwart climate treaty negotiations set for December in […]

  Oliver Grant.  Migration and Inequality in Germany.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.  416 pp.  $190.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-927656-1. Leo Lucassen.  The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.  296 pp.  $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-07294-9. Elia Morandi.  Italiener in Hamburg: Migration, Arbeit und […]

John Bellamy Foster.  The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet.  New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009.  328 pp. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels famously urged the world’s workers to unite because they had a world to win, and nothing to lose but their chains.  Today, the reality of climate change and worsening environmental breakdowns […]

“Amnesty” has become one of the dirtiest words in U.S. politics.  Immigration opponents use it to attack any plan — however restrictive and punitive — to regularize the status of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.  Immigration advocates avoid the word, substituting euphemisms like “a path to citizenship.” Amnesty’s big problem […]

  Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption.  This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]

Should the neoliberal “free market” govern food production and distribution?  Or can we learn from the efforts of Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, to address food insecurity?  Christina Schiavoni describes the transformation of that nation’s food and agriculture system.  David Pimentel points out the colossal energy demands of the US system and proposes ways to reduce […]

Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics. It all began with United States Vice […]

Patrick Barrett, Daniel Chavez, and Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito, eds., The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn, Pluto Press (2008), 320 pages. The conflict in Honduras has been an ongoing challenge for governments across the political spectrum in Latin America.  In the years leading up to this tense and decisive event a number of leaders and social […]

I It is possible to argue that the growth rate figures for both India and China are exaggerated.  But, we shall proceed by accepting them as correct.  The inequalities in both economies however have increased dramatically during this very phase of extraordinarily high growth, to a point where substantial segments of the population, particularly, but […]

Even before the crisis over the election outcome broke, the prognosis for Iran in the coming year was not good.  Back in October oil prices had started to fall and the contractionary measures taken by the Central Bank several months earlier to rein in inflation had slowed the economy.  Last year, Iran’s imports had soared […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its June 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The dire consequences of human induced climate change are now most often presented as facing us in the near future.  We suggest that the future, as far as […]

  A fact-finding team of nine students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) recently visited Lalgarh, to probe into the reality of the ongoing movement of the people in the area.  Here we are enclosing the preliminary details of what we saw.  We would like to appeal to your daily news channel to also highlight certain […]

See, also, Food Crisis and the Global Land Grab at , a new Web site set up by Grain. PHNOM PENH, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) — Sam Pov, a rice farmer in Cambodia’s western Battambang Province, is very worried that his land will be taken over by a foreign investor. “I’ve heard the rumours about […]