by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
What the COVID-19 pandemic should have shown us that we cannot rely on the capitalist market system to guarantee us a steady supply of the groceries that we need and thus it is important that we, once again, grow for victory, so to speak. And, alas, the situation is not and has not been thus with just food though food (and water) is more important than clothes and even toilet paper.
The system of “just in time” employed by most stores and especially supermarkets just does not cut it when it comes to crises such as this one. The chain breaks far too easily and aided and abetted by people who are able to because they have the money, and the way of transporting it, panic buying and hoarding supplies makes for empty shelves, and some of those, nay, in fact most of those, have looked worse than shelves in the stores in so-called communist countries during the worst of crises there.
But it was and is not just basic supplies that could have been “home-grown” but were and are not but almost everything else is being affected by such a crisis. When aircraft are grounded and ships cannot enter port from places where food and other goods are imported from then we exasperate the problems in the supply chain.
In recent times we have had in the UK one minister for food and farming who one can only describe as a total idiot for he stated that Britain did not really need any farmers for the country was able to import everything it needed from elsewhere. Yes, and we can see that result now in that flour, for instance, has become in very short supply. We are exporting our grain, more than we keep it, and then have to import grain when the demand exceeds the supply. Either those people are born stupid or they have worked very hard at getting that way.
Also each and every time for instance Brexit was being mentioned the first word out of the mouths of the farmers and the farmer's union – and government officials – was that they were worried about what it would do to the exports of farm produce to countries of the EU and elsewhere. The first and foremost task of a farmer is not to produce produce for export but to feed the nation. In the capitalist system, however, the opposite seems to be the case; first exports and then the nation.
We need more farms, small family farms, and smallholdings where food is grown (and sold) locally, rather than the large industrial farms who are mainly concerned with taking the subsidies and predominately think about exporting rather than about feeding the people of the country.
Other countries take a different approach, such as Russia, which enacted a law that enables Russians to obtain between one and six hectares (depending on the region) of land free in perpetuity, though it cannot be sold, only passed on, grant to build a house and for equipment, with the only obligation to grow food for themselves and their family and to sell the surplus on the market, and it works in feeding the nation. Can't be done, obviously, in Britain, the US, or other neoliberal capitalist countries.
So, it is left to us to see that we can grow as much as possible of our own food at home, in whatever place and way.
© 2020
