In the days before the presidential election, RFK Jr. published a short video on X indicating that when Trump “gets me inside” the United States Department of Agriculture, “we’re going to give farmers an off-ramp from the current system that destroys soil, makes people sick, and harms family farms.”

When @realDonaldTrump gets me inside the USDA, we're going to give farmers an off-ramp from the current system that destroys soil, makes people sick, and harms family farms.

If you want this to happen as much as I do, ​PLEASE DONATE TODAY https://t.co/YxxGkb2Ulq pic.twitter.com/npo6ZEiIo6

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 30, 2024

In other words, RFK Jr. and the MAHA team will ensure that small farms are made great again by directing policies to focus on traditional agriculture.

The Trump victory signals that Americans want to drain the DC swamp and improve their health—if that’s through busting up the corruption in the USDA and FDA. The MAHA movement ensures that small farms will be prioritized over mega-corporate farms.

RFK Jr.’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, provided more color in a recent interview about some of the MAHA plans:

“We’re definitely up against a lot, between what I call the real food movement and the fake food movement, and really what belies these two movements is a population of people who don’t need to spend an enormous amount of money on healthcare services, that are healthy, that are vibrant … and then belying the fake food movement is very, very wealthy corporations that are going to have an endless patient pool, and are going to have a consumer base that actually is physically addicted to some of these products.

And then also, an entire psychology around it that has people believing that they’re sacrificing themselves for the greater good … we saw it play out in the delivery of the Covid vaccines.”

Shanahan continued:

“This is where I want to make the investments in our country. I want to create an entire – I want to bring back the infrastructure that allowed small and mid-size growers to be able to produce, and process, and package, and distribute locally, because that has all been taken away for the most part – it’s why it’s impossible economically for small growers to make a profit today.”  

Earlier in the interview, she noted:

“I’ve been a producer on a few of these regenerative agriculture films, and the biggest pushback we’ve ever gotten [was] from the artificial meat investors.

Nice Shanahan: The movement for real food is “up against A LOT”

“I want to bring BACK the infrastructure that allowed small and mid-size growers to be able to produce, and process, and package, and distribute locally, because that has all been taken away.”

“I’ve been a producer… pic.twitter.com/iDxGKduFhc

— American Values (@AV24org) November 14, 2024

Bold vision: Go long small farms? Go short, fake meat?

The economy ranks as the most important of 22 issues that U.S. registered voters say will influence their choice for president. It is the only issue on which a majority of voters, 52%, say the candidates’ positions on it are an “extremely important” influence on their vote. Another 38% of voters rate the economy as “very important,” which means the issue could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters.

Voters view Donald Trump as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy, 54% versus 45%. Trump also has an edge on perceptions of his handling of immigration (+9 percentage points) and foreign affairs (+5), while Harris is seen as better on climate change (+26), abortion (+16) and healthcare (+10). The candidates are evenly matched on voters’ impressions of who would better address gun policy.

Countless other surveys have told us the same thing.

The American people remember what life was like before the pandemic, and they desperately want to have that back.

In particular, U.S. voters have become deeply frustrated with the cost of living…

“It’s inflation, stupid!” wrote Bernard Yaros, U.S. lead economist at Oxford Economics, in an October 24 report, borrowing from political strategist James Carville’s famous coinage. “Inflation is the foremost issue voters are concerned about, and how it is perceived will determine the election.”

The Biden administration is being blamed for this inflation crisis, and that is going to cost Kamala Harris millions upon millions of votes.

At this moment, demand at food banks is off the charts in many of the key swing states that Harris desperately needs to win.

In Pennsylvania, we are being told that demand “is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic”…

Joe Arthur, who runs the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, told NBC News the current problem is “a hunger crisis.”

“The need that we’re seeing in our localities is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic, yet there are less resources for those families today.”

At one food bank in Michigan, demand is actually “significantly higher” than it was during the pandemic…

One truck can carry enough food for up to 600 households, but some days even that isn’t enough to meet the demand, which has gone up by 18% over the past 12 months, said Ken Estelle, president of Feeding America West Michigan.

“We have never seen this level of need in the 43 years we have been serving this community. It is significantly higher than during Covid and has pressed us beyond our capacity,” said Estelle. “We’ve just seen this drumbeat increase every month of more people and more people.”

And at one food bank in Wisconsin, demand has more than doubled since 2022…

In the relatively affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, Rochelle Gamauf said each week she is seeing new faces at her food pantry, Friends With Food, which she started during the pandemic.

The organization has gone from giving out around 420,000 pounds of food in 2022 to over a million pounds in 2023. On a recent week in September, nearly 400 families came through the door, 48 of whom were coming for the first time — a 50% increase in new families compared to last year, she said.

This is the biggest reason why Donald Trump is leading in the polls in all three states.

A lot of the people that are going to these food banks actually have jobs. But they aren’t earning enough to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living.

If you go to the grocery store and you completely fill up your cart with food, it is going to cost you hundreds of dollars. 25 years ago, I could fill up an entire grocery cart for less than 50 bucks.

Inflation is a hidden tax on all of us, and it is suffocating millions upon millions of households all over the country.

Of course the Biden administration insists that everything is just fine.

For months, the government has been releasing numbers that look great initially, but later they are revised dramatically lower.

Let me give you an example.  Last month we were told that job openings were rising, but now we have learned that they are actually plunging…

Last month, when Kamala Harris still had some chance of winning the election, we were not surprised to learn that according to the extremely political Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August the number of job openings unexpectedly soared from an upward revised 7.7 million to 8.040 million, which was not only a 3-sigma beat to expectations, but was also above the highest Wall Street forecast. Fast forward to today, when Kamala’s chance of winning are effectively zero – as even the suddenly apolitical Jeff Bezos now admits – and shockingly moments ago the BLS reported that in September, the number of job openings  plunged from over 8 million to just 7.4 million, the lowest since early 2021…

This kind of thing has been happening over and over again.

The American people are sick and tired of being fed fake numbers when they can see that economic conditions are clearly deteriorating all around them.

Our standard of living has been steadily declining for years, and most Americans are just barely scraping by at this point.

I am entirely convinced that most of the experts will be completely shocked by the outcome of this election, and our imploding economy will be the number one reason why so many unexpected voters come out of the woodwork.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Data from AgFunderNews cited by the National Pulse reveals that the industry is in dire straits due to dwindling money. Funding for the lab-grown meat sector peaked at $989 million in 2021 but dipped slightly to $807 million in 2022. This dropped by almost 80 percent to just a mere $177 million last year.

“Industry experts claim they need substantial government assistance to survive, with various sectors within agrifood tech seeing a steep decline in investments since early 2022 and private capital for [lab-grown] meat almost vanishing,” the Pulse pointed out. “The decline in funding has prompted many startups to reduce staff, consolidate operations or, in some cases, cease operations altogether.”

Robert Jones, vice president for global public affairs at Dutch startup Mosa Meat, highlighted this issue during the Future Food-Tech Summit in late September. He told participants: “There’s a valley of death we’re not going to cross as an industry without a massive infusion of public investment.”

Andrew Ive, founder and managing general partner at venture capital (VC) firm Big Idea Ventures, echoed Jones’ sentiments. He emphasized that VC money won’t be funding capital expenses for large-scale commercial facilities for fake meat production.

“I think it’s going to take [a country] like the Netherlands or the [United Arab Emirates],” he told AgFunderNews, stressing the immense capital needed. “Maybe Saudi Arabia. It could be … Japan.”

Ive continued: “For me, what makes sense is [the mix of] cultivated with traditional meat – a bit like adding ethanol to gasoline for cars. So I think the way this will ultimately be rolled out in the marketplace will be where 20 percent of the meat content of a dumpling in China, for example, will end up being cultivated meat as opposed to traditional meat.”

Customers have decided: Fake meat is a NO for them

According to the Pulse, the economic case for lab-grown meat is “deteriorating rapidly.” In the same manner, the environmental and health cases for it are also on a decline.

Recent studies have suggested that fake meat is far from being a green alternative to the traditional livestock farming it ostensibly seeks to replace. One such paper by scientists from the University of California, Davis found that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 times more carbon dioxide (CO2) when scaled up to the current supply in the market.

According to the paper, the environmental impact of fake meat “is likely to be orders of magnitude higher than median beef production.” The increased CO2 levels would be necessary for the purification processes that supply nutrients to cultured cells. The study defines this process as “the removal of cells from an animal or plant and their subsequent growth in a favorable artificial environment.” (Related: CLIMATE FAIL: Study finds lab-grown meat generates up to 25 TIMES MORE CO2 than conventional beef production.)

“The use of refinement methods contributes significantly to the economic and environmental costs associated with pharmaceutical products since they are both energy and resource intensive,” the study authors wrote.

Aside from this, concerns about fake meat being a product of “immortalized cell lines” that replicate in perpetuity – cancer, in other words. A February 2023 op-ed in the Pulse by the Raw Egg Nationalist, which cited a story from Bloomberg, warned of the dangers of eating such edible cancer cells.

“The problem is that the materials used to make the product – ‘immortalized cell lines’ – replicate forever, just like cancer. Which means, in effect, that they are cancer. Although these cell lines are widely used in scientific research, they’ve never been used to produce food before.”

Head over to FakeMeat.news for more stories like this. Watch Jefferey Jaxen and Del Bigtree discussing the free fall of the fake meat industry.

This video is from the HighWire with Del Bigtree channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

• What they don’t want you to know about lab-grown meat.
• Fake meat firms collapsing due to lower sales, anti-woke backlash.
• Study: Vegan FAKE MEAT products linked to cardiovascular issues.
• Immortalized cell lines used in lab-grown meats can cause CANCER.
• Fake meat companies are failing as consumers abandon processed plant-based alternatives to real meat.

Sources include:

• TheNationalPulse.com 1
• AgFunderNews.com
• TheNationalPulse.com 2
• TheNationalPulse.com 3
• Brighteon.com

• In my interview with Calley Means, co-author of the book “Good Energy,” we discuss how tobacco companies bought major food companies in the 1980s, applying addictive strategies to food production and influencing nutritional guidelines, leading to a surge in chronic diseases
• The 1910 Flexner Report, funded by Rockefeller, reshaped medical education, emphasizing pharmaceutical interventions and marginalizing holistic approaches, setting the stage for modern health care’s limitations
• Corruption in health institutions, including conflicts of interest in research funding and guideline committees, perpetuates misguided health advice and hinders effective chronic disease management
• Reforming the health system requires removing conflicts of interest from advisory committees, restructuring financial incentives and empowering patients through grassroots advocacy and education
• A multi-pronged approach to health care transformation is necessary, including individual empowerment, new wellness-focused business models and policy changes to address the chronic disease epidemic

(Mercola)—I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Calley Means, co-author of the book “Good Energy” and a policy advisor to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Our conversation uncovered some shocking truths about the origins of our modern food system and the dire health consequences we’re facing as a result.

However, Means’ insights into the corruption of our health institutions and his ideas for reform leave room for much optimism about the future of health in America.

The Tobacco Industry’s Secret Takeover of Our Food Supply

The tobacco industry’s covert influence on our food system is responsible for many of the processed foods that line grocery store shelves today. As Means explained:¹

“In the 1980s when you looked at the most valuable companies in the world — now it’s Microsoft and Amazon and Google — it was Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds back then. These were two of the largest companies in the world and they had the largest cash piles, the largest balance sheet of any company in human history because smoking was such a profitable business.”

As smoking rates began to decline due to public health warnings, these tobacco giants made a calculated move. With their core business under threat, these tobacco giants used their massive cash reserves to buy up major food companies:²

“They had big piles of cash, cigarette smoking was clearly going to decline, what do they do with that cash? They bought food companies. So, we think about the 1980s as the age of Wall Street, M&A [mergers and acquisitions], Gordon Gekko. When you look at the biggest deals and the biggest Wall Street transactions in the 1980s, the two largest were cigarette companies buying food companies.”

The implications of this shift were profound:³

“By 1990, the two largest food companies in the world were R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. The book ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ which is the preeminent book on the M&A deals of the 1980s, was about R.J. Reynolds buying Nabisco. And then you had Philip Morris buying Kraft, US Foods, some of the largest transactions in U.S. history.”

Making Food Addictive: The Cigarette Company Playbook

What happened next was a deliberate effort to apply tobacco industry tactics to food production:⁴

“So, what the cigarette companies did very intentionally is they shifted two departments over, they shifted their scientists over to make food more addictive. And this is an amazing situation, right? And this is documented. This is very clear what they were trying to do.

They’re going from cigarettes, which is becoming a stigmatized industry where it’s not allowed for kids, to something every single American needs — to eat starting basically at birth.”

To push their new addictive foods, the industry employed the same lobbying tactics that had kept tobacco “safe” for decades. They funded biased research from prestigious institutions like Harvard to claim sugar doesn’t cause obesity. But this wasn’t just about changing recipes.

The tobacco industry’s influence extended to shaping nutritional guidelines. This junk science was then used to create the infamous USDA food pyramid, which Means called “the most deadly document in American history.” The goal was clear: “And just as any drug provider, the business is getting people hooked, getting them hooked early, getting them hooked for a long period of time.”⁵

The Health Consequences of a Corrupted Food System

The impact of these changes on public health has been devastating. As Means pointed out:⁶

“Cancer rates actually exploded since the 1980s dramatically. So, I joke, but I’m being somewhat serious, we’d be much healthier if the cigarette companies were back to making cigarettes.

It was actually a total disaster for the metric they were trying to solve with coming down on smoking — cancer rates. By letting the cigarette industry actually get to our food, cancer rates have absolutely just exploded along with every other chronic condition.”

This history has been largely obscured from public view. When I asked how they managed to hide their involvement, Means explained that while it has been reported on, the information hasn’t been widely disseminated. He learned about it through his work in public affairs, where they openly discussed using the “tobacco playbook” for food companies.

Beyond the personal toll, this epidemic of chronic disease is threatening the economic stability of our nation:⁷

“Health care costs are going up at an increasing rate today. They’re at 20% GDP, they’re growing double the rate GDP, health care costs. They’re the largest source of U.S. inflation. They’re going to be 40% GDP … just mathematically, if these trends don’t change, we will be a fat, infertile, sick, depressed and bankrupt population, if these trends aren’t reversed.”

The Flexner Report: How American Medicine Lost Its Way

Our discussion then turned to the historical roots of America’s dysfunctional medical system. I brought up the influential Flexner Report of 1910, which Means agreed was a pivotal moment:⁸

“John D. Rockefeller, and let’s be clear, maybe with some good intentions, the medicine was the Wild West, it wasn’t … I don’t want to get into his psyche, but I want to just say what happened. As he was a top funder of modern medical education, so Johns Hopkins was one of them, and he also was the father of the modern pharmaceutical industry from a lot of his byproducts from oil.”

The Flexner Report, commissioned by Rockefeller, fundamentally reshaped medical education in America and laid the foundations of the modern medical system, dubbed “Rockefeller medicine.” Rockefeller financed the campaign to consolidate mainstream medicine, adopt the philosophies of the growing pharmaceutical industry and shutter its competition.

Rockefeller’s crusade caused the closure of more than half of U.S. medical schools, fostered public and press scorn for homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, nutritional, holistic, functional, integrative and natural medicines, and led to the incarceration of many practicing physicians. It emphasized a reductionist approach that siloed different conditions and focused on pharmaceutical interventions. As Means explained:⁹

“That report said anything about nutrition, anything about holistic, is not serious science. Serious science is siloing a condition, naming it once somebody already got sick, and then drugging it or committing surgery. And then that has really infiltrated medical education.”

Biology didn’t change just because Rockefeller was pressured under monopoly threats from the U.S. government to advert from oil and shift into pharmaceuticals. Biology still remains the same and requires treating the causes of disease, which we in no way, shape or form do with our current medical paradigm.

Further, this paradigm shift left most physicians woefully unprepared to deal with the chronic disease epidemic plaguing the U.S. today. Our medical system excels at acute interventions but struggles to address the root causes of ongoing health issues. A key factor in perpetuating this crisis is the corruption of our health institutions, which leads to dangerously misguided health advice.

“The problem is that the majority of NIH [National Institutes of Health] grants go to conflicted researchers, that the FDA drug approval department is 75% funded by pharma, that the USDA Guideline Committee on Nutrition — 95% of the advisors are funded by food or pharma,” Means says, adding:¹⁰

“The American Diabetes Association, which accepts money from Coca-Cola, is dictating standards of care, saying that Type 2 diabetes is nonreversible and basically just a drug deficiency. It is not. It is reversible and we just need a correct accounting of why people are getting diabetes and how to potentially reverse it.”

Strategies to Transform American Health

Despite the dire situation, Means remains optimistic about our ability to turn things around. He outlined a strategy for transforming American health, including fixing corrupted medical guidelines. Ideally, the first step is to remove conflicts of interest from the bodies that set medical guidelines and research priorities. As Means put it:¹¹

“Within a week we can do this — make it that there cannot be conflicts on these key medical advisory committees. What happens then? We actually get a report on what glyphosate is doing to us, we actually get reports on standards of care and tell the American Diabetes Association to stop dictating completely corrupt guidelines.”

While Means encourages this top-down approach to reforming the system, it’s a challenge because these regulatory agencies have been taken over by the very industries they’re supposed to be regulating. This occurred decades ago, and it’s getting worse as time goes on. Lobbying efforts and new rules, legislation, is controlled.

It’s almost impossible in the current state to defeat this system, so the approach I’ve taken is to go from the bottom up — go to the people directly with solutions. Fortunately, technology is emerging that allows us to have the manpower, or at least the AI power, to help people understand what they need to do to achieve optimal health.

Part of Means’ plan also involves restructuring the financial incentives in health care. Currently, the system profits from keeping people sick and managing chronic conditions rather than preventing or reversing them.

The Power of Grassroots Action

He also emphasizes the need to educate and empower patients directly, which aligns closely with my own approach of providing people with actionable health information, and cleaning up our food supply. Means believes that with the right political will, significant changes could be made quickly:¹²

“The president tomorrow can sign an executive order saying that the USDA Nutrition Guideline Committee can’t take money from food companies. The president tomorrow can sign an executive order saying that NIH cannot go to researchers with conflicts of interest. Tomorrow the FDA can be disentangled from the pharmaceutical industry.”

While I’m skeptical about the ease of implementing such changes given the entrenched interests opposing them, the power of grassroots action remains. Means is working to build grassroots momentum through his nonprofit, EndChronicDisease.org:¹³

“We have thousands of people coming and taking action. You can sign up and email your congressperson and call them. These basics, that’s what pharma does.

When there’s a bill threatening pharma, they do this grassroots advocacy where they have a bunch of old people call members of Congress and say, ‘Don’t take my drugs away.’ That matters … As I meet with members of Congress I hear a lot, ‘Our phones aren’t ringing on this issue.’ So, we’re getting the phones ringing on this issue.”

Means is also taking concrete steps to improve the situation through his company TrueMed. They’re working within the current system to expand access to preventative health measures. This innovative approach allows people to use tax-advantaged health savings accounts to invest in their wellbeing proactively, rather than just paying for drugs and procedures after they get sick.

The Spiritual Dimension of Health

By making chronic disease a politically resonant issue, we can drive real change and create the political pressure needed to enact real reforms. However, a point that’s central to my philosophy is the connection between physical health and spiritual growth. When you’re truly healthy, you’re better able to connect with your intuition and fulfill your higher purpose. It’s difficult to do that when you’re not healthy.

Ultimately, it will take a multi-pronged approach to truly transform our health system — empowering individuals with information, developing new technologies and business models to support wellness, and pushing for policy changes at the highest levels.

If you’re inspired to get involved, I encourage you to check out Means’ work at TrueMed.com and EndChronicDisease.org. By adding your voice to this growing movement, we can build the momentum needed to create real, lasting change in U.S. health care.

Remember, your health is your most valuable asset. By taking control of your own well-being and advocating for systemic reforms, you’re not just improving your own life — you’re contributing to a healthier, more vibrant future for all.

• ^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13} Brighteon, Mercola, How Big Tobacco Captured and Transformed the Food Industry for Worse — Interview with Calley Means

At least according to one registered dietitian nutritionist in Los Angeles, who recently took to Fox News to lay out the risks from ultra-processed foods in the American diet.

Ilana Muhlstein said on Fox news that America’s diet is 60% ultra-processed, but that kids consume even more than that.

“With children, it’s actually over 70%. That is really wild when you think about it,” she said. “What we eat defines how our cells work, how our organs work, and we’re seeing a strong decline in mental health and well-being.”

And a recent BMJ study found that 60% of Americans’ daily calories come from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which are linked to 32 poor health outcomes, including mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic issues like cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, according to Fox.

Muhlstein added: “We’re actually seeing that this next generation might be the first generation to … have a shorter lifespan than their parents due to nutrition and lifestyle factors.”

A nutritious diet boosts children’s mental well-being, behavior, and academic performance, says Muhlstein, a nutritionist and instructor of “Raising Balanced Eaters.”

While cutting ultra-processed foods entirely is unrealistic, Muhlstein advocates for reversing the typical 70/30 ratio of processed to whole foods, recommending an “80/20 rule”—80% whole foods like eggs, fish, and vegetables, and 20% indulgent foods like chips and ice cream.

For healthier options, Muhlstein suggests swapping ketchup for marinara sauce on chicken nuggets and fries, opting for chicken strips over mechanically processed nuggets, and choosing hamburgers over nitrite-laden hot dogs. Each small change reduces the overall level of food processing.

The nutritionist warns that poor eating habits won’t resolve on their own and encourages exposing kids to diverse flavors and textures early on.

The Fox News report says that sitting down for family meals—without screens—can reduce the risk of eating disorders and promote a healthy relationship with food. Just three to five family meals a week can make a positive difference, fostering better eating habits and family connection.

The notice about the project appeared on the official U.S. government website for contract opportunities, SAM.gov. Its description states: “The minimum needs of this contract are that the contractor provide all personnel, equipment, facilities, supervision, and other items necessary to conduct studies that demonstrate modeling of nuclear warfare on a global scale that would lead to destruction of the agriculture systems such as farms.”

The project will fall under the umbrella of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center, who are looking to model how food production systems could be affected by a nuclear disaster. Although it could yield potentially valuable information, one has to wonder why they suddenly feel the need to carry out such a project.

The prolonged military conflict between Ukraine and Russia is almost certainly behind this concern, and it’s worth noting that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insinuated that the White House may be poised to lift restrictions on Ukraine using the long-range weapons it has received from Western nations inside of Russia.

In other words, it seems likely that the DoD is preparing for the potential fallout of what could be a dramatic change to the way the conflict is currently playing out there. There are also concerns that the pursuit of these types of projects could indicate changing military priorities are on the horizon.

The Colorado data modeling firm Terra Analytics has been awarded the contract, which will also entail optimizing a software suite simulating the fallout of nuclear warfare on infrastructure related to agriculture. Aerial mapping and other approaches will be used to explore how food supplies and farms in former Eastern bloc countries could be affected.

Another component of this study is the development of a better model simulating the effect that radioactive materials would have on agriculture in an unspecified “non-destructive nuclear event.”

The fact that the contractor working on the project must be able to adapt the software to meet the specifications of classified Department of Defense computing systems would appear to indicate that the project may be linked to national security concerns.

Putin has hinted at a nuclear response if West allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons inside Russia

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that if the West does change its stance to allow Ukraine to use weapons it has supplied them inside of Russia, it will be directly fighting Russia and the nature of the conflict would change considerably. He promised to launch an “appropriate” response but did not provide details. However, he said earlier this summer that one option was arming enemies of the West with Russian weapons so they could strike Western targets abroad.

Some analysts, like University of Innsbruck security specialist Gerhard Mangott, believe that Russia might send a nuclear signal.

“The Russians could conduct a nuclear test. They have made all the preparations needed. They could explode a tactical nuclear weapon somewhere in the east of the country just to demonstrate that (they) mean it when they say we will eventually resort to nuclear weapons,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Russian’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia warned that NATO will “be a direct party to hostilities against a nuclear power” should it permit Ukraine to use its long-range weapons against Russia.

He cautioned: “You shouldn’t forget about this and think about the consequences.”

Sources for this article include:

• JonFleetwood.Substack.com
• SAM.gov
• Reuters.com

Now, the inflation crisis under the Biden-Harris administration has intensified this issue even more. It was especially families with children that suffered during Covid-19 as school lunches disappeared and they have been hardest hit again in 2022 and 2023.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the USDA just published its latest report on the issue, showing that last year, almost 18 percent of households where children lived were food insecure, up from 17.3 percent in 2022 and 12.5 percent in 2021. The negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic as well as the inflation crisis on food security still stayed behind those of the Great Depression between 2008 and 2011, however.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Looking at all household, 13.5 percent were classified as food insecure by the USDA most recently, defined as experiencing difficulty to meet basic food needs in the span of one year, including the inability to buy enough food, buy balanced meals or eat regular portion sizes as well as skipping meals, experiencing hunger and worry about food. In 2021, this share had been 10.2 percent.

While the share of food-insecure households rose in the U.S. in 2023, so did the share of adults living in them – from 13.5 percent to 14.3 percent. The share of U.S. children living in a food-insecure household rose as well from 18.5 percent to 19.2 percent. However, according to the USDA, it was often the adults in food-insecure households who restricted food intake, while attempting to shield children – especially younger ones – from negative effects.

Household with children number around 36 million in the U.S., around 27 percent of all households, while children themselves make up around 22 percent of U.S. residents at 72 million.

Traditional authority derives its power from long-standing customs and traditions, while charismatic authority is based on the exceptional personal qualities or charisma of a leader.

According to Weber, the legal-rational authority that characterises Western capitalist industrial society is based on instrumental rationality that focuses on the most efficient means to achieve given ends. This type of rationality manifest in bureaucratic power.

Weber contrasted this with another form of rationality: value rationality that is based on conscious beliefs in the inherent value of certain behaviour.

While Weber saw the benefits of instrumental rationality in terms of increased efficiency, he feared that this could lead to a stifling “iron cage” of a rule-based order and rule following (instrumental rationality) as an end in itself. The result would be humanity’s “polar night of icy darkness.”

Today, technological change is sweeping across the planet and presents many challenges. The danger is of a technological iron cage in the hands of an elite that uses technology for malevolent purposes.

Lewis Coyne of Exeter University says:

We do not — or should not — want to become a society in which things of deeper significance are appreciated only for any instrumental value. The challenge, therefore, is to delimit instrumental rationality and the technologies that embody it by protecting that which we value intrinsically, above and beyond mere utility.”

He adds that we must decide which technologies we are for, to what ends, and how they can be democratically managed, with a view to the kind of society we wish to be.

A major change that we have seen in recent years is the increasing dominance of cloud-based services and platforms. In the food and agriculture sector, we are seeing the rollout of these phenomena tied to a techno solutionist ‘data-driven’ or ‘precision’ agriculture legitimised by ‘humanitarian’ notions of ‘helping farmers’, ‘saving the planet’ and ‘feeding the world’ in the face of some kind of impending Malthusian catastrophe.

A part-fear mongering, part-self-aggrandisement narrative promoted by those who have fuelled ecological devastation, corporate dependency, land dispossession, food insecurity and farmer indebtedness as a result of the global food regime that they helped to create and profited from. Now, with a highly profitable but flawed carbon credit trading scheme and a greenwashed technology-driven eco-modernism, they are going to save humanity from itself.

The world according to Bayer

In the agrifood sector, we are seeing the rollout of data-driven or precision approaches to agriculture by the likes of Microsoft, Syngenta, Bayer and Amazon centred on cloud-based data information services. Data-driven agriculture mines data to be exploited by the agribusiness/big tech giants to instruct farmers what and how much to produce and what type of proprietary inputs they must purchase and from whom.

Data owners (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet etc.), input suppliers (Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, Cargill etc.) and retail concerns (Amazon, Walmart etc) aim to secure the commanding heights of the global agrifood economy through their monopolistic platforms.

But what does this model of agriculture look like in practice?

Let us use Bayer’s digital platform Climate FieldView as an example. It collects data from satellites and sensors in fields and on tractors and then uses algorithms to advise farmers on their farming practices: when and what to plant, how much pesticide to spray, how much fertiliser to apply etc.

To be part of Bayer’s Carbon Program, farmers have to be enrolled in FieldView. Bayer then uses the FieldView app to instruct farmers on the implementation of just two practices that are said to sequester carbon in the soils: reduced tillage or no-till farming and the planting of cover crops.

Through the app, the company monitors these two practices and estimates the amount of carbon that the participating farmers have sequestered. Farmers are then supposed to be paid according to Bayer’s calculations, and Bayer uses that information to claim carbon credits and sell these in carbon markets.

Bayer also has a programme in the US called ForGround. Upstream companies can use the platform to advertise and offer discounts for equipment, seeds and other inputs.

For example, getting more farmers to use reduced tillage or no-till is of huge benefit to Bayer (sold on the basis of it being ‘climate friendly’). The kind of reduced tillage or no-till promoted by Bayer requires dousing fields with its RoundUp (toxic glyphosate) herbicide and planting seeds of its genetically engineered Roundup resistant soybeans or hybrid maize.

And what of the cover crops referred to above? Bayer also intends to profit from the promotion of cover crops. It has taken majority ownership of a seed company developing a gene-edited cover crop, called CoverCress. Seeds of CoverCress will be sold to farmers who are enrolled in ForGround and the crop will be sold as a biofuel.

But Bayer’s big target is the downstream food companies which can use the platform to claim emissions reductions in their supply chains.

Agribusiness corporations and the big tech companies are jointly developing carbon farming platforms to influence farmers on their choice of inputs and farming practices (big tech companies, like Microsoft and IBM, are major buyers of carbon credits).

The non-profit GRAIN says (see the article The corporate agenda behind carbon farming) that Bayer is gaining increasing control over farmers in various countries, dictating exactly how they farm and what inputs they use through its ‘Carbon Program’.

GRAIN argues that, for corporations, carbon farming is all about increasing their control within the food system and is certainly not about sequestering carbon.

Digital platforms are intended to be one-stop shops for carbon credits, seeds, pesticides and fertilisers and agronomic advice, all supplied by the company, which gets the added benefit of control over the data harvested from the participating farms.

Technofeudalism

Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, argues that what we are seeing is a shift from capitalism to technofeudalism. He argues that tech giants like Apple, Meta and Amazon act as modern-day feudal lords. Users of digital platforms (such as companies or farmers) essentially become ‘cloud serfs’, and ‘rent’ (fees, data etc) is extracted from them for being on a platform.

In feudalism (land) rent drives the system. In capitalism, profits drive the system. Varoufakis says that markets are being replaced by algorithmic ‘digital fiefdoms’.

Although digital platforms require some form of capitalist production, as companies like Amazon need manufacturers to produce goods for their platforms, the new system represents a significant shift in power dynamics, favouring those who own and control the platforms.

Whether this system is technofeudalism, hypercapitalism or something else is open to debate. But we should at least be able to agree on one thing: the changes we are seeing are having profound impacts on economies and populations that are increasingly surveilled as they are compelled to shift their lives online.

The very corporations that are responsible for the problems of the prevailing food system merely offer more of the same, this time packaged in a  genetically engineered, ecomodernist, fake-green wrapping (see the online article From net zero to glyphosate: agritech’s greenwashed corporate power grab).

Elected officials are facilitating this by putting the needs of monopolistic global interests ahead of ordinary people’s personal freedoms and workers’ rights, as well as the needs of independent local producers, enterprises and markets.

For instance, the Indian government has in recent times signed memoranda of understanding (MoU) with Amazon, Bayer, Microsoft and Syngenta to rollout data-driven, precision agriculture. A ‘one world agriculture’ under their control based on genetically engineered seeds, laboratory created products that resemble food and farming without farmers, with the entire agrifood chain, from field (or lab) to retail in their hands.

This is part of a broader strategy to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture, ensure India’s food dependence on foreign corporations and eradicate any semblance of food democracy (or national sovereignty).

In response, a ‘citizen letter’ (July 2024) was sent to the government. It stated that it is not clear what the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) will learn from Bayer that the well-paid public sector scientists of the institution cannot develop themselves. The letter says entities that have been responsible for causing an economic and environmental crisis in Indian agriculture are being partnered by ICAR for so-called solutions when these entities are only interested in their profits and not sustainability (or any other nomenclature they use).

The letter poses raises some key concerns. Where is the democratic debate on carbon credit markets. Is the ICAR ensuring that the farmers get the best rather than biased advice that boosts the further rollout of proprietary products? Is there a system in place for the ICAR to develop research and education agendas from the farmers it is supposed to serve as opposed to being led by the whims and business ideas of corporations?

The authors of the letter note that copies of the MoUs are not being shared proactively in the public domain by the ICAR. The letter asks that the ICAR suspends the signed MoUs, shares all details in the public domain and desists from signing any more such MoUs without necessary public debate.

Valuing humanity

Genuine approaches to addressing the challenges humanity faces are being ignored by policymakers or cynically attacked by corporate lobbyists. These solutions involve systemic shifts in agricultural, food and economic systems with a focus on low consumption (energy) lifestyles, localisation and an ecologically sustainable agroecology.

As activist John Wilson says, this is based on creative solutions, a connection to nature and the land, nurturing people, peaceful transformation and solidarity.

This is something discussed in the recent article From Agrarianism to Transhumanism: The Long March to Dystopia in which it is argued that co-operative labour, fellowship and our long-standing spiritual connection to the land should inform how as a society we should live. This stands in stark contrast to the values and impacts of capitalism and technology based on instrumental rationality and too often fuelled by revenue streams and the goal to control populations.

When we hear talk of a ‘spiritual connection’, what is meant by ‘spiritual’? In a broad sense it can be regarded as a concept that refers to thoughts, beliefs and feelings about the meaning of life, rather than just physical existence. A sense of connection to something greater than ourselves. Something akin to Weber’s concept of value rationality. The spiritual, the diverse and the local are juxtaposed with the selfishness of modern urban society, the increasing homogeneity of thought and practice and an instrumental rationality which becomes an end in itself.

Having a direct link with nature/the land is fundamental to developing an appreciation of a type of ‘being’ and an ‘understanding’ that results in a reality worth living in.

However, what we are seeing is an agenda based on a different set of values rooted in a lust for power and money and the total subjugation of ordinary people being rammed through under the false promise of techno solutionism (transhumanism, vaccines in food, neural laces to detect moods implanted in the skull, programmable digital money, track and trace technology etc.) and some distant notion of a techno utopia that leave malevolent power relations intact and unchallenged.

Is this then to be humanity’s never-ending “polar night of icy darkness”? Hopefully not. This vision is being imposed from above. Ordinary people (whether, for example, farmers in India or those being beaten down through austerity policies) find themselves on the receiving end of a class war being waged against them by a mega-rich elite.

Indeed, in 1941, Herbert Marcuse stated that technology could be used as an instrument for control and domination. Precisely the agenda of the likes of Bayer, the Gates Foundation, BlackRock and the World Bank, which are trying to eradicate genuine diversity and impose a one-size-fits-all model of thinking and behaviour.

A final thought courtesy of civil rights campaigner  Frederick Douglass in a speech from 1857:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”