Top Left Link Buttons
  • English

Agriculture

Category Archives

China to U.S.: Choose Economic Development or Opium in Afghanistan

November 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, Finance, General updates, Global Diplomacy

Nov. 9, 2021 (EIRNS)—China’s Global Times has some sound advice for the U.S. and its Western partners on how to best stop opium, build security, and secure political liberties in Afghanistan: help get its economy going again. 

While the West “ponders” whether to give aid to Afghanistan, China’s ambassador in Kabul was busy opening an “Afghan trade lifeline.” The ambassador arranged for a Nov. 1 air shipment of 45 tons of Afghan pine nuts from Kabul to Shanghai. There, they were quickly packed and quickly sold on-line, Global Times reporter Mu Lu wrote yesterday, in an article titled “Afghans deserve to be better off through hard work, not planting opium.” 

“How can a country achieve stability and long-term development, if its people live on drug cultivation?” Mu asked. Under the occupation and war, Afghanistan’s old infrastructure was destroyed, little new built, agriculture and animal husbandry stagnated, and Afghanistan became the world’s largest producer of opium. Washington now promises to offer humanitarian assistance, but only after freezing “nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank …. sow[ing] the seeds of economic collapse in Afghanistan.” 

A Middle East Studies Institute professor at Shanghai International Studies University, Liu Zhongmin, made the key point: “Afghanistan will not realize stability without the fundamental underpinnings of economic development.” If the international community would start from the perspective of development, and help Afghanistan “integrate into the outside world with its own resources and advantages, ensuring the country a foothold in its own industry, the Afghan people will have the chance to really develop their motherland with assistance from other countries.”

Mu Lu concludes: “Stable, reliable work and income are important to help Afghanistan emerge from the drug economy of the past 20 years, and to give the Afghan people the opportunity to earn their way to prosperity. It is better to teach a man to fish than to give him fish. This is the responsible way to help Afghanistan.” 

The Schiller Institute will be discussing some bold ideas for how to do this with Afghan and other representatives this week in Panel 2, “The Science of Physical Economy,” on the first day of its international conference this coming weekend. {Register today at: https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/202111_13-14_conference.}

Schiller Institute Brings Haiti Development Plan to Spanish-Speaking Audience

November 10, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Agriculture, Dominican Republic, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Haiti, New financial order updates, Our economic development events, Power & Energy

Schiller Institute Brings Haiti Development Plan to Spanish-Speaking Audience –

Nov. 7 (EIRNS) – Some 40 people from nine countries in the Americas participated in a Spanish-language international dialogue on “The Schiller Institute Plan for the Development of Haiti” held Nov. 6 via Zoom video conference. The opening presentations were made by EIR’s Dennis Small and Plan co-author Cynthia Rush, followed by remarks from three respondents: Domingo Reyes (Dominican Republic, economist); Billy Anders Estimé (Haiti, co-founder of Café Diplo Haiti); and Caonabo Suárez (Dominican Republic, water expert). All three respondents emphasized the importance of the Schiller Institute’s global approach to solving the Haiti problem, denounced attempts to pit Haitians and Dominicans against each other, and urged the widest possible circulation of the Schiller Institute Plan (now available in English, Spanish, and French versions).  The dialogue lasted almost three hours, and is now posted on the EIR Espanol YouTube channel https://youtu.be/q8S7W8TB2ZQ . The countries represented were Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the U.S.

`… Soaring Food Prices and Conflict’ Increases Hunger by a Third in West Africa

April 20, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Healthcare, Healthcare, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

`Explosive Mix of Soaring Food Prices and Conflict’ Increases Hunger by a Third in West Africa

April 19 (EIRNS) — The hunger situation in Africa continues to deteriorate, as relief efforts continue to be overwhelmed with new crises, and receive little help in response to their calls. In an April 16 release under the above title, the World Food Program warned that “more than 31 million people in [western Africa] are expected to [become] food insecure and unable to feed themselves during the coming June-August lean season – the period when food is scarce before the next harvest. That number is more than 30 percent higher than last year and is the highest level in the best part of a decade.

“Food prices have increased dramatically across the region. Local staples are up by nearly 40 percent over the 5-year average, and in some areas, prices are up by more than 200 percent. This is caused in part by the economic impact of measures put in place to contain the spread of the coronavirus over the past year. People’s incomes have plummeted due to reductions in trade, tourism, informal activities and remittances.”

Chris Nikoi, WFP’s Regional Director for West Africa, explained that, “In West Africa, conflict is already driving hunger and misery. The relentless rise in prices acts as a misery multiplier, driving millions deeper into hunger and desperation. Even when food is available, families simply cannot afford it – and soaring prices are pushing a basic meal beyond the reach of millions of poor families who were already struggling to get by. The needs are immense, and unless we can raise the funds we need we simply won’t be able to keep up. We cannot let 2021 become the year of the ration cut,” he warned. [emphasis added]

This year, almost 10 million children under 5 are acutely malnourished across the region,” the WFP says, “with the Sahel alone accounting for half of that number. This number could rise significantly alongside the projected 30 percent increase in hunger, and the high prices of nutritious foods.”

Schiller Institute Urges Funds for Afghan Health Platform; British Urge Billions to Fight Mythical `Global Warming’

November 2, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)–Schiller Institute Chair Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her weekly webcast yesterday reported that more than 2,000 hospitals in Afghanistan had closed during the fighting in that nation. Even more shocking, only 100 hospitals, most lacking medical supplies and adequate personnel, remain for 38 million people.

Mrs. LaRouche called on her audience to mobilize immediate emergency aid to be sent from the United States, Europe and the whole world; China has already done so. She called the needed supply action, “Operation Ibn Sina,” after the famous Persian doctor born in today’s Afghanistan, considered one of the greatest scientists of the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of modern medicine. Of the 250 books Ibn Sina is estimated to have written, 40 deal with medicine, including The Book of Healing, and the Canon of Medicine (which became a standard medical text at medieval universities until about 1650).

In a cynical juxtaposition to this heroic effort to save the nation of Afghanistan, police estimated last summer that the current “Climate Summit” in Glasgow could cost “several hundred million pounds,” nearly half a billion U.S. dollars. COP 26 will be the largest summit the U.K. has ever held, with up to 200 leaders expected. Better they stay home and focus on Operation Ibn Sina instead.

Hyperinflationary Monetary Policy Starting to Have Serious Results

May 11, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, Economic development updates, Finance, General updates, New financial order updates

May 10 (EIRNS) – The central bankers’ “regime change” plotted at the August 2019 annual bankers’ summit – senior partner central bank and junior partner government Treasury teaming up to print vast amounts of currency and direct its spending – has been carried out since that time, and now has triggered the start of a hyperinflation.

Bloomberg’s Commodity Price Index is up 62% from April 2020 to April 2021. These are spot market prices, which means not every buyer is paying them. But, nothing like this has been seen since January 1980, at the end of the 1970s “stagflation” and when Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chair was already crushing the economy to stop it – 10-year Treasury interest rates were then 13%, not 1.5% as now.

Wall Street and the City are very happy, so far, about this rapid inflation in various forms of producer prices, which their corporate clients are passing on to households across the world whose wage income – at best – is stagnant. At “regime change” leader BlackRock, Inc., its global head of thematic investing Evy Hambro enthused on Bloomberg Television May 8, “There’s still quite a lot of room to go. What we’re really doing is we’re testing the upper ranges of commodity markets to work out what the new price range is going to be.”
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s global food price index rose in April to 120.9, which represents a 30.7% increase in one year. Food inflation last reached this level in 2011. Corn wholesale prices have surged the most, averaging 142% in the past year. Otherwise, sugars and oils are rising in price most quickly. Economists will “explain” that food prices both to the farmer and at the supermarket have been deflating during most of the 21st Century. But that is not the point: A hyperinflationary policy of printing currency and avoiding productive investment has triggered a sudden and rising inflation, as EIR forecast it would last in the Fall and the EIR Alert in late Summer. This inflation is getting started, and it will not be “transitory” unless the policy is changed radically.

In the United States, the price of the median home purchase is 18% higher than one year ago. While rental inflation had fallen quite low during the pandemic (though the lowest-income renters faced the most inflation!), it is now ready to take off. Two very large rental owners, Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, are raising rents by 8-11% on all new leases and re-leases.

The April Consumer Price Index, defanged of inflation in every way Federal Reserve and Labor Department economists have been able to devise in 35 years of effort, will be published May 12. It tends to shape Americans’ “expectations” of inflation. That survey by the New York Federal Reserve Bank showed today, for example, that Americans expect home price inflation to be 5.5% in the coming year – when it is already 18% for the median home!

UN Official Warns of Economic Collapse and Food Insecurity in Afghanistan

October 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, World war danger updates

Oct. 30 (EIRNS)–In New York, UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths told The Associated Press in an interview that the G20 leaders should worry about Afghanistan because its economy is collapsing and half the population risks not having enough food to eat as the snows have already started to fall. Half the Afghan children under age five are at risk of acute malnutrition and there is an outbreak of measles in every single province which is “a red light” and “the canary in the mine” for what’s happening in society, he said.

Griffiths warned that food insecurity leads to malnutrition, then disease and death, and “absent corrective action” the world will be seeing deaths in Afghanistan. He said the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people in Afghanistan now, but the U.N. predicts that because of the dire winter conditions and the economic collapse it is going to have to provide food to triple that number — 12 million Afghans — “and that’s massive.”

“So, the message that I would give to the leaders of the G 20 is worry about economic collapse in Afghanistan, because economic collapse in Afghanistan will, of course, have an exponential effect on the region,” he said. “And the specific issue that I would ask them to focus on first, is the issue of getting cash into the economy in Afghanistan — not into the hands of the Taliban — into the hands of the people whose access to their own bank accounts is not frozen.”

Schiller Institute Internet Dialogue — ‘Need Creative Genius of the World to Bear on Haiti and Afghanistan’

September 26, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Activity of the Schiller Institute, Agriculture, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Healthcare, Healthcare, Power & Energy, Space updates, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, World Land-Bridge updates

Sept. 25 (EIRNS)—Today the Schiller Institute held an international webinar titled, “Reconstructing Haiti—America’s Way Out of the ‘Global Britain’ Trap.” The two-and-a-half-hour discussion featured elements of a proposed development outline for Haiti, as well as immediate emergency action required, and brought together experts, with ties to Haiti, in engineering, medicine and development policy. Today’s deliberations stand in stark contrast to the events of the week, which included the U.S. forced deportation of thousands of displaced Haitians from the Texas-Mexico border, back to Haiti, to disaster conditions from the August earthquake and before.  

The six panelists were Richard Freeman, co-author of “The Schiller Institute Plan To Develop Haiti,” which EIR will publish this week for its Oct. 1 issue; Eric Walcott, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Institute of Caribbean Studies; Firmin Backer, co-founder and President of the Haiti Renewal Alliance; Joel DeJean, engineer and Texas activist with The LaRouche Organization; Dr. Walter Faggett, MD, based in Washington, D.C., where he is former Chief Medical Officer of the District of Columbia, and currently Co-Chairman of the Health Council of D.C.’s Ward 8, and an international leader with the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites; and moderator Dennis Speed of the Schiller Institute. 

Freeman presented both the dimensions of both the extreme underdevelopment forced for decades on Haiti, and also the essentials of a development program for that nation, in the context of development of all the Island of Hispaniola, and the Caribbean. He presented a map of proposed rail, nuclear power sites, safe water systems and other vital infrastructure. He showed maps of proposals that Chinese firms had made in recent years, but which fell into abeyance.

Firmin Backer pointed out that the USAID has spent $5.1 billion in Haiti over the 11 years since the 2010 earthquake, but what is there to show for it? Now, with the latest earthquake on Aug. 14, we can’t even get aid into the stricken zones, because there is no airport nor port in southern Haiti to serve the stricken people. We should reassess how wrongly the U.S. funding was spent. Firmin reported how Haiti was given some debt cancellation by the IMF years back, but then disallowed from seeking foreign credit! 

Eric Walcott was adamant, “We need the creative genius of the world to bear on Haiti and Afghanistan.” He said, “leverage the diaspora” to develop Haiti. There are more Haitian medics in New York and Miami than all of Haiti. He stressed that Haiti is not poor; the conditions are what is poor. But the population has pride, talent and resourcefulness. Walcott made a special point about elections in Haiti. He said, “Elections are a process,” not an event. He has experience. From 1998 to 2000, Walcott served as the lead observer for the OAS, for elections in Haiti. 

Joel DeJean, an American of Haitian lineage, was forceful about the need to aim for the highest level in that nation, for example, leapfrog from charcoal to nuclear power. He advised, “give China the opportunity” to deploy the very latest nuclear technology in Haiti—the pebble-bed gas cooled modular reactor. We “don’t need more nuclear submarines, we need nuclear technology!” He called for the establishment of a development bank in Haiti, and other specifics. 

Dr. Faggett summed up at many points, with the widest viewpoint and encouragement of action. He served in the U.S. military’s “Caribbean Peace-Keeping Force,” and was emphatic about taking action not only in Haiti, but worldwide. He referenced President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saying that “you can tell a lot about people, by how they take care of the health of their people.” He reported that, at present, aid workers in Haiti, are having to shelter in place, because of the terrible conditions. 

But, he said, we should mobilize. Have “vaccine diplomacy,” and work to build a health platform in Haiti, and a health care delivery system the world over. He is “excited about realizing Helga’s mission,” referring to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, who issued a call in June 2020, for a world health security platform. At that time, she and Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, formed the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites. 

UN World Food Systems Summit—World Food Program’s Beasley Bucks the Green Line, Goes for Saving Lives

September 24, 2021by tobi in Agriculture, Global Diplomacy, World Food Program

Today’s UN World Food Systems Summit was a 13-hour marathon of 215+ speakers (mostly pre-recorded,) and short videos, on the themes of making commitments to altering food and farm practices to be “nature-positive” (as if humanity is unnatural). Dozens of national representatives spoke, along with NGOs and foundations, e.g. Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All principal UN agency leaders spoke, from the World Health Organization to the Food and Agriculture Organization. There were some threatening statements, e.g. from Lord Goldsmith, the UK Minister for Pacific and the Environment, who said, “we must reconcile our lives and economics with the natural world,” and protect the Earth with “nature-based solutions.” He called for increasing forests, and reducing cropland.

David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) was outspoken that our task is to stop conflict and hunger. There were 4.7 million deaths over the past 18 months from COVID-19, but 16 million deaths from starvation, he said. “We’ve got the expertise. We’ve got the determination.” The question is, “What are we going to do?” He said that every day over this past year, the billionaire echelon increased their wealth by $5.2 billion, and 24,000 people died of starvation per day. This means the billionaires increased their wealth $216 million per hour, and 1,000 people per hour died. He began by estimated that there is $400 trillion of wealth in the world, and only a few billion are needed to save all the lives now in danger. Twice he said, “Shame on us.”

He did NOT speak about “resilience…inclusivity…women’s empowerment…indigenous rights…changing dietary consumption habits…nature enhancement….biodiversity” He said that we must produce and deliver the food, and stop the conflicts. He issued a call to action. That’s how to use the summit, he stressed. “Love our neighbor as an equal….A child in Niger is equal to a child in New York.” Save these lives. “Children can’t eat empty promises. It’s up to us to make food and nutrition a reality.”

Afghanistan’s Drought and Water Crisis Worsening; 2,000 Health Facilities Close

October 27, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Afghanistan, Agriculture, COVID-19, Economic development updates, Finance, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), Power & Energy

Afghanistan’s Drought and Water Crisis Are Worsening; 2,000 Health Facilities Close –

Oct. 25, 2021 (EIRNS)–Afghanistan’s collapse in physical economic and agricultural production, the implosion of its health system, as well as the threat to human life, has gotten worse over the last two months. The nationwide drought is intensifying, while the West applies a tourniquet to the flow of necessary funds.

Physical economic conditions never stay in a “metastable state;” they either get better or worse.

In June of this year, then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani officially declared a drought in Afghanistan. This was based on information from several agencies, including the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which declared that “80% of Afghanistan is exposed to serious drought”—30% to “severe drought,” and 50% to “serious drought,” comprising 80%—and the remaining 20% part of the country was exposed to “moderate drought.”

Richard Trenchard, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization director for Afghanistan, stated in late September, “This is the worst drought in 35–36 years. Many public institutions which provide a safety net, have ceased to function. Farmers have very little to fall back upon.”

Farming is being destroyed. The UN reported August 25, “Some 40 percent of [Afghanistan’s] crops have been lost to drought in the second massive water shortage in three years—further heightening food insecurity.” The World Food Program already reported that 14 million people in Afghanistan are food insecure, a number that is doubtless rising.

But the shortage of water is affecting not only agriculture, but the whole economy and society, which depends on water. A 2008 report reported “that drinking water supplies reach only 23 percent of Afghanistan’s total population… The country’s total sanitation coverage [is] only 12 percent.”

Two critical infrastructural sectors expose some of the crisis.

Afghanistan has only a combined approximately 100 private and public hospitals for a nation of 40 million people, a meager amount. The nation’s health system is run through a network of 2,200 “health facilities,” about 200 of which appear to be primary health clinics; it is not clear how large the other facilities are. These 2,200 facilities are run through an institution called Sehatmandi which is administered by the World Bank through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund and the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. It is funded through the World Bank, the European Union, Canada and Global Financing Facilities.

When the Taliban came to power in the period of August 17–18, these funding institutions cut off money. On September 30, Alexander Matheou, the Asia Pacific director of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies stated that “over 2,000 health facilities have closed.” He added that more than 20,000 health workers in the country were no longer working or were working without being paid; more than 7,000 of them are women. “People might agree to work without salaries for a few more weeks,” Matheou stated. “But once medicines run out totally, if you can’t switch on the lights, if you’ve got nothing to offer somebody who comes to your clinic, then they’ll shut the doors.”

Under intense pressure, on September 20, the Global Fund and the United Nations Development Fund signed an agreement to supply $15 million to the 2,200 health facilities. This is a drop in the bucket.

International donors pledged in October $1.2 billion to Afghanistan. But there are three roadblocks: 1) it is not clear how much of the pledged money will be really delivered; 2) it takes sometimes months for the money to get into the system; and 3) above all, the clinics are greatly inadequate, Afghanistan needs hundreds of new advanced hospitals, tens of thousands of skilled doctors and nurses, and so forth.

In the meantime, COVID is looming. Nine of Afghanistan’s 37 COVID hospitals have closed. Afghanistan has put a reported only 2.2 million COVID jabs into people; it has 1.2 million doses of vaccine waiting to be distributed, that haven’t been. They will expire by the end of the year.

This is pure and simple genocide.

As for water, Afghanistan has an annual surface water runoff water volume of 57,000 million cubic meters per year, which comes out to approximately 1,425 cubic meters/year per capita. This is insufficient, but would be a start. However, Afghanistan does not have an adequate water basin catchment system, and precipitation is not evenly distributed geographically.

In 2016, India spent $275 million to complete what is now called the “Afghan-India Friendship Dam” in Herat province on the Hari River. It will irrigate 75,000 hectares of land. But otherwise, new dam construction and broader water management hardly exists.

The U.S. is blocking more than $9 billion in Afghanistan’s central bank that belong to the Afghan people. The World Bank, IMF, and EU are blocking hundreds of millions more. (See the Schiller Institute’s demand for release of the Afghans’ funds at this link.)

These more than $10 billion, were they deposited in a fund under sovereign Afghan control, could be used to build hospitals, administer the COVID-19 vaccine; begin emergency food and water distribution; make down payments on dams and water management projects; build power stations, etc. Immediate building in Afghanistan must start.

World Food Program’s Beasley in Haiti: ‘We’ve Got to Help These People’

September 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Agriculture, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Haiti, Healthcare, Healthcare, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, World Food Program

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)–The Executive Director of the World Food Program’s David Beasley has been in Haiti for several days to work with aid teams and publicize the need to take action. On Sept. 16, he sent a video tweet from Maniche, showing how “house, after house, after house, after house in Maniche was completely destroyed… you can see how bad it is, and we’ve got to help these people.” There have been four weeks of clean-up, but there is destruction all over the place. He wrote, “This is why these families need our support to recover and rebuild.” On Sept. 17, he visited a cooked-meals operation run by the World Central Kitchen.

Page 4 of 7First...345...Last