I wrote this a while ago when someone asked about phosphorus shortages and food insecurity. Short answer: it is neo-malthusian justification of the delieberately inefficient globalized, neo-colonial, capitalist food industry.
The system, not access to specific chemical products like fertilizer, is the root problem. I believe that the system is not “flawed” as the author puts it, but rather is simply designed to produce a different result than the implementers say. It is designed to subjugate non-western nations via the conditions of IMF loans which inevitably result in the neoliberalization/monopolization of the debtor coutnry’s food markets/land. Furthermore, it gives the West (the US in particular) a key political weapon against any nations that get out of line… food. Food has been weaponized against other nations for many many years now. For example, one of the key contributing factors to the famines in the USSR was the Western powers not accepting the money or gold of the USSR due to a blockade during years of drought.
When you look up fertilizer/phosphorus shortages you get articles from 2011, 2008,2014, etc. I think that while shortages are real they are pretty convenient pretexts for price gouging and shifting blame away from the system itself which dominates the food production/access for most of the globe. The mortgage crisis in 2008 played the same role - the attention was diverted from the BROKEN system that led to the recession and the blame was placed on something that sounded smart, was actually true in part, and could be blamed on a scapegoat. In 2008 it was poor people taking loans they couldn’t afford (I guarantee you that was workshopped and focus grouped) instead of the derivatives market and predatory lending practices (which extend far beyond the housing market) that are the real, systemic, and unresolved problems.
Back to food, one of the key conditions of the IMF loans is the adherence to American Intellectual Property rights/laws. The result is that there is suddenly an enormous barrier to entry to farming in the form of yearly seed purchasing (you must purchase seeds yearly) and other IP royalties. Seeds, biotechnology, techniques, GMOs, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, etc. all are a form of rent which the west can extract from IMF-loan nations in addition to land consolidation. In fact that is a major reason the US wanted control over Ukraine - I have done some digging into the carve-up of Ukrainian farmland by US Private equity. Therefore, they can make farming cost prohibitive to locals, then american FDI can monopolize land and the american biotech/seed firms have been collecting their rent all along. One of the key issues which led to the 2014 coup in Ukraine was Yanukovych’s decision not to sign a 14$ loan with the IMF, and instead sign a better loan with Russia. Literally months after that he was gone.
Anyone saying stuff like “the population is too big” is an ass. We can find solutions, but as you hint at I think there are very real homicidal/eugenicist undercurrents in western leadership. Covid should be a big reveal that even Westerners are not safe from the willingness of our leadership to sacrifice us so that profits go up. This is the end result of what Michael Parenti referred to as the pathology of wealth.
If you have time I recommend this video from Breakthrough News regarding food sovereignty from the perspective of a Marxist Brazilian Agricultural Economist. https://youtu.be/PdQOGNrTEaE
Excerpt showing the role of Intellectual Property
As a result the demand as well as the grant of patents in plant breeding technology rose very high under the Patent Co-operation Treaty in the USA, Europe and Japan (Atkinson et al. 2003). The international agreements forces the national governments to include some sort of intellectual property rights to the plant genetic resources (Blakeney 2009). This incident eventuated in several overlapping claims over the genetic resources and often the example of golden rice is given which has approximately 70 different patented technologies
I think you’re right about the eugenecist / fascist tendencies aligned with Malthusianism.
Another factor to consider is that the overpopulation argument assumes that people in the ‘overpopulated areas’ – by which the Malthusians mean there global south and the places in the global north where immigrants live – want big families. But:
This isn’t necessarily true. There have been global campaigns to discourage the use of contraception in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. (Hello Mother Theresa.)
Due to the uneven geographical and economic development of capitalism, medical care is lacking in most parts of the world, so not everyone has access to e.g. contraception or ‘family planning’ advice even if it’s legal or accepted.
I remember this one from school, so I’m unsure how rigorous the reasoning is: the low wages and lack of pensions, social security, and healthcare in many parts of the global south means that people need bigger families because (a) family members may die young, and (b) otherwise there will not be enough people to help the elders and those who cannot work.
Richard Titmus, one of the architects of the British Welfare State (and unfortunately a eugenecist) showed that social security could be used to limit population growth. Now my memory is a little hazy here, and I’ve misplaced his book to check. I’m 80% sure it was him: he went to an island nation (possibly Mauritius) and helped the government set up a system to discourage people having more than two children (what else is a eugenecist to do on their holidays?). Anyway, the system worked, so far as I know. Population growth slowed. Essentially, IIRC, ‘families’ got very generous benefits if they had two children (yay), but then were penalised quite heavily for having three or more children (I did warn you: a eugenecist isn’t going to handle this kind of thing very well). My point is: if the wealth of the global south were not siphoned off to imperialists, the resources might be available to curb population growth without killing off or targeting certain groups. Caveat: I’m not saying this should be done or is necessary. It’s a question to be answered democratically by all the people of each place. But then we face the ‘problem’ (for want of a better word) that if there West stopped stealing from the South, population growth would likely slow down naturally: (a) current policies encourage and require ‘over population’ to create lots of workers and a reserve labour army; and (b) when conditions improve, people tend to have fewer children and later, to pursue e.g. career goals / higher education (although this may change if it were financially possible to have children and a career, etc).
Sorry, that was far more rambling than I intended. I started with good intentions and succinct bullet points, then, well, as you can see… Essentially, my point is: capitalism has created the conditions for current population levels. Whether this is manageable (it is, with better distribution) or seen as unmanageable (by Malthusians), the dynamic would shift in a socialist world (and so any ‘solution’ in a socialist world would have to solve a different population ‘problem’ than the existing, so called overpopulation).
I wrote this a while ago when someone asked about phosphorus shortages and food insecurity. Short answer: it is neo-malthusian justification of the delieberately inefficient globalized, neo-colonial, capitalist food industry.
Literally from today. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/23/us-imposes-flawed-food-system-on-the-world/
The system, not access to specific chemical products like fertilizer, is the root problem. I believe that the system is not “flawed” as the author puts it, but rather is simply designed to produce a different result than the implementers say. It is designed to subjugate non-western nations via the conditions of IMF loans which inevitably result in the neoliberalization/monopolization of the debtor coutnry’s food markets/land. Furthermore, it gives the West (the US in particular) a key political weapon against any nations that get out of line… food. Food has been weaponized against other nations for many many years now. For example, one of the key contributing factors to the famines in the USSR was the Western powers not accepting the money or gold of the USSR due to a blockade during years of drought.
When you look up fertilizer/phosphorus shortages you get articles from 2011, 2008,2014, etc. I think that while shortages are real they are pretty convenient pretexts for price gouging and shifting blame away from the system itself which dominates the food production/access for most of the globe. The mortgage crisis in 2008 played the same role - the attention was diverted from the BROKEN system that led to the recession and the blame was placed on something that sounded smart, was actually true in part, and could be blamed on a scapegoat. In 2008 it was poor people taking loans they couldn’t afford (I guarantee you that was workshopped and focus grouped) instead of the derivatives market and predatory lending practices (which extend far beyond the housing market) that are the real, systemic, and unresolved problems.
Back to food, one of the key conditions of the IMF loans is the adherence to American Intellectual Property rights/laws. The result is that there is suddenly an enormous barrier to entry to farming in the form of yearly seed purchasing (you must purchase seeds yearly) and other IP royalties. Seeds, biotechnology, techniques, GMOs, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, etc. all are a form of rent which the west can extract from IMF-loan nations in addition to land consolidation. In fact that is a major reason the US wanted control over Ukraine - I have done some digging into the carve-up of Ukrainian farmland by US Private equity. Therefore, they can make farming cost prohibitive to locals, then american FDI can monopolize land and the american biotech/seed firms have been collecting their rent all along. One of the key issues which led to the 2014 coup in Ukraine was Yanukovych’s decision not to sign a 14$ loan with the IMF, and instead sign a better loan with Russia. Literally months after that he was gone.
Anyone saying stuff like “the population is too big” is an ass. We can find solutions, but as you hint at I think there are very real homicidal/eugenicist undercurrents in western leadership. Covid should be a big reveal that even Westerners are not safe from the willingness of our leadership to sacrifice us so that profits go up. This is the end result of what Michael Parenti referred to as the pathology of wealth.
If you have time I recommend this video from Breakthrough News regarding food sovereignty from the perspective of a Marxist Brazilian Agricultural Economist. https://youtu.be/PdQOGNrTEaE
Excerpt showing the role of Intellectual Property
As a result the demand as well as the grant of patents in plant breeding technology rose very high under the Patent Co-operation Treaty in the USA, Europe and Japan (Atkinson et al. 2003). The international agreements forces the national governments to include some sort of intellectual property rights to the plant genetic resources (Blakeney 2009). This incident eventuated in several overlapping claims over the genetic resources and often the example of golden rice is given which has approximately 70 different patented technologies
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289008337_Intellectual_Property_Rights_and_Food_Security
Great post!
I think you’re right about the eugenecist / fascist tendencies aligned with Malthusianism.
Another factor to consider is that the overpopulation argument assumes that people in the ‘overpopulated areas’ – by which the Malthusians mean there global south and the places in the global north where immigrants live – want big families. But:
Sorry, that was far more rambling than I intended. I started with good intentions and succinct bullet points, then, well, as you can see… Essentially, my point is: capitalism has created the conditions for current population levels. Whether this is manageable (it is, with better distribution) or seen as unmanageable (by Malthusians), the dynamic would shift in a socialist world (and so any ‘solution’ in a socialist world would have to solve a different population ‘problem’ than the existing, so called overpopulation).