Chennaiah Poguri, Asian Peasant Coalition (APC)

March 2024

Introduction

We would like to thank all of you for inviting us to share and participate in this timely and mutually beneficial theoretical conference on the ongoing imperialist crisis. It is our honor to be among friends and comrades in discussing and, hopefully, forging a mutual understanding of the immense tasks that we face as anti-imperialist activists.

Today, we are facing a rapidly intensifying global crisis, characterized by deteriorating living conditions of peoples, especially in the rural Global South; escalating inter-imperialist warmongering, wars of occupation, and fascism; and increasingly severe climate-induced emergencies.

Imperialism has, even in times of its so-called prosperity, led to the starvation of food producers, landless farmers, the rural poor, Indigenous Peoples, and Dalits, among others in the Global South; the plunder and expropriation of our lands and natural resources; and the rollback of our hard-fought economic and socio-political rights.

Moreover, history has proven that during times of crisis in imperialist countries, the already dire conditions of peoples in colonies and client states go into overdrive.

Indeed, Lenin’s assertion that imperialism is the moribund stage of capitalism continues to unfold in the most brutal and heinous manner.

“Global” Food Crisis

The worsening hunger throughout the world, especially in the past fifteen years, is a direct result of and is exacerbated by the continuing imperialist plunder of colonies and semicolonies, domination of their monopoly TNCs and partner domestic elites, and ongoing imperialist wars of occupation and rivalry.

It is a continuation of colonial policies that gave rise to Banana Republics, retracing plunderers trade routes now under the name of Globalization, and the subversion of domestic food systems in favor of transatlantic profits.

Though diverse in scope and trigger, the food crises of 2006-2008, 2011-2012, 2017, and 2020 to now share common foundations.

In our years as a Coalition and, for many of us, decades of activism for the peasant right to land, the human right to food, and peoples’ right to food sovereignty, it has become clear that food crises are a feature of societies under the relentless rule of monopoly capitalism.

Hunger and famines today are not a result of scarcity but one of monopoly. Food producers, especially peasants of the Global South, comprise the vast majority of the world’s poor and hungry. All while colonial-era landlords and their new counterparts, as well as TNCs of imperialist countries continue to amass profit from the abundant surplus we produced.

And this has been more pronounced in recent decades, following the neoliberal restructuring of economies since the 1980s. Through the US-led Structural Adjustment Programs and later the World Trade Organization, state support for farmers and agricultural production has been on a strategic decline. This artificially created ‘gap’ has since been filled by TNCs entrenching themselves in monopolizing seeds, agricultural inputs, and, in some cases, land.

Under the dictate of the US-led IMF-WB, decades of liberalization or ‘opening up’ of economies directly translated to the domination of the ‘global market’ over small food producers, local agricultural businesses, and rural economies in the Global South. The declining profits in imperialist countries at the start of the 1980s were, in a huge part, buoyed up by the cheap wages, free-er flow of speculative capital, and steady debt accumulation from semi colonies or so-called ‘emerging economies’.

Massive loans for infrastructure and governance reforms served as contracts of plunder between imperialist countries and client states, with military outposts as insurance. The free flow of foreign direct investments was enshrined as the sole aim and main means of development for most governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Large land estates – such as colonial haciendas and latifundios – were retained and, in some cases, expanded to accommodate the expansion of the lopsided globalized agricultural trade. The absence, if not reversal, of national industrialization for most of the semicolonies guaranteed that a vast horde of low-cost rural workers would drive down wages across the board.

While famines remained prevalent in the majority of client states, especially in Africa and South Asia, it was conveniently labeled as remnants of the pre-globalized world. It was the 2006 food crisis and the subsequent one in 2011 that globalized hunger as a result of monopoly capitalism – with the next one increasingly more intense, protracted, and widespread than the last.

Decades of dismantling domestic food production and public agricultural infrastructure have left food-producing nations at the mercy of global trade monopolies. While only about 20% of food is traded globally, the price increase in global food markets has an outsized influence on domestic food inflation in many countries, especially poor and mostly agrarian nations.

Today, we’re in the midst of “the largest food crisis” since the second World War – a harbinger of an extremely fragile food system built not to serve the needs of the people but of imperialist dictates and monopoly profit. In 2022, the poorest households in the 48 worst-hit

nations spent an extra US$9 billion on food alone. In these same countries, extreme poverty has risen to levels not seen since the turn of the century.

Over the same period, the combined net profit of the top four grain TNCs soared to a whopping US$14 billion. Collectively, these four companies– US’s Archer-Daniel-Midlands, Bunge, and Cargill, and EU-based Louis Dreyfus Company– control 70-90% of the world’s traded grains including wheat, corn, and rice.

There’s also a clear pattern of accelerated global plunder happening today: TNCs from imperialist countries are profiting from the world’s working peoples through speculative inflation. The dominance of US-led financial markets, far removed from any increased value from productive sectors, accelerated in the era of neoliberalism. This has greatly facilitated and enhanced the profitability of speculation, particularly in highly concentrated industries such as agricultural trading.

As it is, vulture-like speculation on agricultural trade is an already established practice among TNCs. As Bunge chief financial officer John Neppl admitted at a conference call in 2022: “What we’ve always found is that in times of high volatility, high prices and high volume is when we have the opportunity to make the most money.”

These extremely egregious wagers on famines have immensely benefited hedge funds (such as US’s Vanguard and BlackRock), banks, and speculators – many of which are also shareholders and owners of grain trading companies ADM and Bunge, among others. EU’s mining giant Glencore PLC alone, which owns Vitterra, has reported a net profit of $17.3bn for 2022, mainly from its grain trading and speculation.

Decades of dismantling self-sufficiency in favor of a globalized market controlled by a handful of corporations have left billions vulnerable. The solution lies in dismantling this exploitative system and rebuilding domestic food production, prioritizing the right to food over corporate profits. Only then can we break the cycle of hunger and build a more just and equitable food system for all.

Landlessness, Plunder

As in hunger, the growing landlessness today is a worsening symptom of protracted crisis in colonies and semicolonies of imperialist states. The massive army of landless peasants in the Global South demonstrate how land monopolies, which are a remnant of feudalism, and the failure or non-existence of national industrialization have persisted.

Serfdom and predatory lending, which are the most common forms of feudal exploitation, are predicated on peasant’s landlessness. Colonial-era plantations in Latin America and Asia continue to operate atop the backs of agricultural and farmworkers – serving TNCs’ demands for cheap labor and high returns. Land monopoly, preserved as a social base for imperialist plunder, remains the single largest source of inequality in most of the Global South.

Due to the overwhelmingly rural base of national liberation movements in the 20th century and, more importantly, the success of socialist land reform movements in the former USSR and pre-1976 PRC, the land question has since become essential to imperialism’s efforts to preserve hegemony in the Global South. The failed US’ invasion of Vietnam, for one, was

complemented with massive funding for a fake land reform in the South, to supposedly win over the peasantry.

Since the 80s, the US, through the Bretton Woods institutions, have financed and championed ‘market-assisted land reform’ as a neoliberal alternative to free land distribution and reconcentrate lands back to the elite. With staggering success through conditional loans and policy manipulations, the World Bank relegated agrarian reform as a market transaction.

Despite the self-proclaimed success of MALR lobbyists, landlessness remains the most salient source of poverty in most countries in the Global South. Turning expropriative land reforms into negotiated land transfers have resulted in massive debts for farmer-beneficiaries and, in many cases, legalized landgrabbing.

The peak of the 2008 global food crisis also unleashed a surge in land grabbing by imperialist countries in the Global South. This land rush was fueled by two factors: the financial collapse prompting investors to seek ‘stable’ and ‘safer’ bets, and the still rising prices for oil, biofuels, and food.

While financialization of farmlands – i.e., its acquisition for the purpose of betting on its future value – might be relatively new, it was but a culmination of neoliberal policies to “create” and deregulate land markets in the Global South for decades.

As it is, land concentration today is more severe than in at least the last three decades. Transnational and domestic elites own up to 70 percent of the world’s total farmlands while peasants in the Global South feed most of the world as farmers, serfs, and agricultural workers.

As it stands, there are at least three important factors or impetuses that are facilitating a “new wave” of landgrabs today: (1) the rise in food, oil, and biofuel prices that drive up the ‘value’ of farmlands; (2) the increasing uncertainty in US and EU financial markets coupled with low-interest rates make farmlands appear safer and more attractive investments; and (3) land- hungry false climate solutions are increasingly gaining policy support.

A world to win

Today, the global food system is entrenched in a complex architecture of exploitation and oppression – depriving food producers of their right to land and resources, starving the population amid abundance, and pushing our planetary boundaries to a point of no return.

A radical transformation of our food systems is not optional but is necessary to solve the food, energy, and climate crisis, ensure a just and equitable climate transition, and forge a viable future for our planet and people.

No amount of piecemeal reforms or utopian daydreaming can stop the imperialist tornado off of its tracks. Much like in land occupation areas, it is only through bitter struggle to assert our rights as people can we see our seeds flower and our communities fed. A massive resurgence of workers and peasant movements, increasingly united under the banner of anti-imperialism, is critical if we are to win a world without landlessness, hunger, and poverty.

Long live international solidarity!