Subject: LaRouche/Bevel pamphlet: part 15

From: [email-masked] (John Covici)
Date: 22 Oct 92 9:38:29 GMT

- Chapter 12 -

     - Revive Family Farming and Feed the World -

   June 1992 marked an historic point in U.S. food and
farm policy, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) announced that federal food stocks were too low to
continue domestic food relief at the high level demanded. 
   This announcement came at a time when an estimated 40
million Americans are dependent on some form of
supplementary food--the WIC (Womens, Infants and Childrens
Program,) TEFAP (Temporary Emergency Food Assistance
Program) for the elderly, the young, and others. One in 10
Americans, or 25 million people, were getting food stamps
as of mid-summer 1992. August 1992's Hurricane Andrew
pushed that number even higher. 
   The response of the USDA? Spokesmen told House
Agriculture Committee hearings in July that, hungry people
are not the concern of the USDA. The ``surplus'' food is
gone, and that is ``good'' for the American farmer. 
   In fact, thousands of American family farmers are
likewise being ruined by the policies of the USDA, and the
food cartel companies that have come to run the USDA. 

               - No Food for the Hungry -
   In mid-June 1991, the USDA suspended distribution of
relief foods from its central warehouse in Atlanta,
Georgia, cutting off thousands of households from needed
staple foods--wheat flour, canned vegetables and fruits,
oils, rice, and other basics. As of July 1, the government
stopped all flows of surplus federal stocks of wheat flour
given as ``bonus'' grants to U.S. schools, hospitals, and
feeding programs for the poor. As of a year earlier, the
USDA began phasing out bonus dairy foodstuffs. 
   The same policy has been put into effect
internationally: no food for the hungry. While agriculture
output potential has been systematically obstructed in
recent decades by International Monetary Fund (IMF)
austerity policies, the United States, and other potential
food donor nations, have decreased, not increased their
relief food shipments. In the mid-1980s, international
grain relief was about 14 millions of tons annually. For
1992, it may be less than 10 millions of tons. Yet the
need is far greater. 
   Africa is facing food shortages on the level of
genocide. In 1992, Africa was hit by the ``Drought of the
Century,'' and by the calamitous effects of decades of
colonialism and neo-colonialism under the IMF.  Russia and
the former Soviet Bloc are likewise reeling under IMF
``shock therapy'' economics.  In 1988, LaRouche warned that
this situation was imminent, and called for a ``Food for
Peace'' orientation to mobilize for emergency food relief,
and all out food production. 
   This approach was particularly called for in 1988,
since in that summer, a ``Killer Drought'' hit the U.S.
cornbelt, and production fell by half. LaRouche, at the
time of the 1988 Democratic Party Convention in Atlanta,
initiated the call for the founding of emergency food
mobilization organization. In September 1988, the Food for
Peace effort of the Schiller Institute was founded at a
conference of 400 people in Chicago. 
   Since that time, as food output potential has fallen
worldwide, the Food for Peace organization has grown to
force of collaborators that span the globe. The summary
points of the program that LaRouche had fought for are
immediately below, followed by excerpts from his October
1988, ``Food for Peace'' strategy proposal given in
Berlin. 

                  - What Is Required -
   The food and farm program advocated by LaRouche
includes the following essential points: 

   {1. Emergency action against famine.}
Mobilize for domestic food relief and against famine in
Africa and other points of need. Collaborate with other
nations, to vastly increase world food output, in
particular protein-dense foods--meat, milk, eggs. More
area planted, higher inputs per unit area, more energy per
acre and per farm worker. Provide advanced food processing
and preservation, especially food irradiation, to provide
lifesaving relief, and improved diets as rapidly as
possible. 
   {2. No more foreclosures.}  Implement a freeze
and rescheduling of farm debt. Stay foreclosures on family
farms, along with all home mortgages and essential
businesses, health care, and other vital services. 
   {3. Low-interest production credits.} Make
available low-interest credits for food and fiber
production and family farm capital improvements. 
   {4. Constitutionalize the Federal Reserve System.
} Nationalize the Federal Reserve System, bringing it
once again under control of the Congress as specified in the
Constituion, in order to resume control over national
monetary and credit policy and resume production
levels--agriculture, industry and infrastructure and
essential services, to the needed per household volumes.
Initiate the needed infrastructure construction and repair
projects to provie 3 million jobs directly, and another 3
millions indirectly. 
   {5. Dump GATT, NAFTA, U.S.-Canada FTA and all
other ``free trade'' impoverishment schemes.} No free
trade usury. Bust up the food cartel companies' worldwide
control over farm production, prices, food processing,
shipping and sales. 
   {6. Ensure parity prices to producers. }
Enforce 100 percent parity farm price leveles in the
United States, and support the same policy for all
nations. 
   {7. Set aside is genocide.} End the programs
to prevent food output on potentially productive farmland.
Offer inducements for land repair and improvement. 
   {8.} Emergency action against famine.
Mobilize--collaborate with other nations, to vastly
increase world food output, in particular protein-dense
foods--meat, milk, eggs. More planting, more inputs, more
energy per acre and per farm worker. Provide emergency
shipments to Africa and all points of need to stop the
starvation now on the level of genocide. 
   {9.} End environmentalist madness. Back real
science. End the Environmental Protection Agency bans on
the safe use of chemicals, in particular DDT.  Back
fullscale research into such areas as genetic engineering
to potentially enhance photosynthesis, and in ``cold
fusion'' and related phenomena (sonoluminescence,
superconductivity, anomolous behavior in water, etc.,) in
order to further breakthroughs in basic nuclear science,
and future applications for energy, agriculture and
medicine. Extend the NASA research into CELSS (controlled
environment agriculture systems--hydroponics, aeroponics,
and other high input-high output systems) throughout the
land-grant university research systems. 
   {10.} Build infrastructure. Initiate the
water, power and transport projects to bring supply lebels
up to requirements for growth. In particular: The North
American Water and Power Alliance; nuclear pwoer for
plentiful, inexpensive electricity and saltwater
desalination;  high speed rail lines and magnetically
levitated trains. 
   {11.} Emergency financial relief to family
farms. Free farmers from the usurious Federal Reserve
policies, in which the Farmers Home Administration, the
Production Credit Associations, Federal Land Banks and
private lenders have been denying farmers the means to
produce, and dispossessing them of their farms on a mass
scale. Investigate and prosecute those individuals and
entities--such as the giant Dutch-based Rabo bank, that
have used the government-backed farm loan guarantees to
profit off the ruination of family farms. 
   {12.} Trust bust the food cartel companies.
Initiate anti-trust and prosecution actions aimed at
dismembering the select few food cartel companies now
dominating food production, trade and government policy at
the USDA and other agencies. Top of the list are: Cargill
Inc., ConAgra, Archer Daniels Midland/Toepfer, Grand
Metropolitan, Garnac/Andre, Continental, Labatts, Louis
Dreyfus, IBP, Tysons, Bunge and similar monopolies. 

      - LaRouche Presents Food for Peace Strategy -

   On October 12, 1988, Lyndon LaRouche, running as an
independent presidential candidate against George Bush and
Michael Dukakis, delivered a now-famous speech at Berlin,
Germany's Kempinski-Bristol Hotel. LaRouche, accompanied
by his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, forecast the
reunification of Germany and the political crisis which
was to sweep the Soviet empire only months later, and
called for the creation of an international Food for Peace
organization as the leading edge of America's foreign
policy. Excerpts of LaRouche's presentation follow: 
      I see a possibility, that the process of
reunification could develop as de Gaulle proposed. I base
this possibility upon the reality of a terrible worldwide
food crisis which has erupted during the past several
months, and will dominate the world's politics for at
least two years to come. 
   The economy of the Soviet bloc is a terrible, and
worsening failure. In Western European culture, we have
demonstrated that the successes of nations of big
industries depend upon the technologically progressive
independent farmer, and what you call in Germany the
{Mittelstand} (Germany's small and medium-sized
entrepreneurs). Soviet culture in its present form is
not capable of applying this lesson. Despite all attempts
at structural reforms, and despite any amount of credits
supplied from the West, the Soviet bloc economy as a whole
has reached the critical point, that, in its present form,
it will continue to slide downhill from here on, even if
the present worldwide food crisis had not erupted. 
   I do not foresee the possibility of genuine peace
between the United States and Soviet Union earlier than
thirty or forty years still to come. The best we can do in
the name of peace, is to avoid a new general war between
the powers. This war-avoidance must be based partly on our
armed strength, and our political will. It must be based
also, on rebuilding the strength of our economies. 
   At the same time that we discourage Moscow from
dangerous military and similar adventures, we must heed
the lesson taught us by a great military scientist nearly
four centuries ago, Niccolo Macchiavelli: we must also
provide an adversary with a safe route of escape. We must
rebuild our economies to the level at which we can provide
the nations of the Soviet bloc an escape from the terrible
effects of their economic suffering. 
   I give a concrete example. 
   Recently, in response to the food crisis, I sponsored
the formation of an international association, called Food
For Peace. This association has just recently held its
founding conference in Chicago Sept. 3-4, and since then
has been growing rapidly inside the United States and in
other nations represented by delegates attending that
conference. 
   One of the points I have stressed, in supporting this
Food For Peace effort, is that the Soviet bloc will
require the import of about 80 million tons of grain next
year, as a bare minimum for the pressing needs of its
population. China is experiencing a terrible food crisis,
too. As of now, the food reserves are exhausted. There are
no more food reserves in the United States, and the
actions of the European Commission in Brussels have
brought the food reserves of Western Europe to very low
levels. Next year, the United States and Western Europe
will be cut off from the large and growing amount of food
imports during recent years, because of the collapse of
food production in developing nations throughout most of
the world. 
   During 1988, the world will have produced between 1.6
and 1.7 billion tons of grains, already a disastrous
shortage. To ensure conditions of political, and strategic
stability during 1989 and 1990, we shall require
approximately 2.4 to 2.5 billion tons of grain each year.
At those levels, we would be able to meet minimal Soviet
needs; without something approaching those levels, we
could not. 
   If the nations of the West would adopt an emergency
agricultural policy, those nations, working together,
could ensure that we reach the level of food supply
corresponding to about 2.4 billion tons of grains. It
would be a major effort, and would mean scrapping the
present agricultural policies of many governments and
supranational institutions, but it could be accomplished.
If we are serious about avoiding the danger of war during
the coming two years, we will do just that. 
   By adopting these kinds of policies, in food supplies
and other crucial economic matters, the West can foster
the kind of conditions under which the desirable approach
to reunification of Germany can proceed on the basis a
majority of Germans on both sides of the Wall desire it
should. I propose that the next government of the United
States should adopt that as part of its foreign policy
toward Central Europe. 
   Rebuild the Economies  Of Eastern Europe 

   I shall propose the following concrete perspective to
my government. We say to Moscow: We will help you. We
shall act to establish Food for Peace agreements among the
international community, with the included goal that
neither the people of the Soviet bloc nor developing
nations shall go hungry. In response to our good faith in
doing that for you, let us do something which will set an
example of what can be done to help solve the economic
crisis throughout the Soviet bloc generally. 
   Let us say that the United States and Western Europe
will cooperate to accomplish the successful rebuilding of
the economy of Poland. There will be no interference in
the political system of government, but only a kind of
Marshall Plan aid to rebuild Poland's industry and
agriculture. If Germany agrees to this, let a process
aimed at the reunification of the economies of Germany
begin, and let this be the {punctum saliens} for
Western cooperation in assisting the rebuilding of the
economy of Poland. 
   We, in the United States and Germany, should say to
the Soviet bloc, let us show what we can do for the
peoples of Eastern Europe, by this test, which costs you
really nothing. Then, you judge by the results, whether
this is a lesson you wish to try in other cases.... 
   I recall the famous case of a certain German
gentleman of the Weimar period. This gentleman was
persuaded that a second world war was inevitable. He
searched the world for a place to which he might move his
family, to be out of the areas in which the next war would
be fought. So, when the war erupted, he and his family
were living in the remote Solomon Islands, on the island
of Guadalcanal. 
   In this period of crisis, there is no place in which
any man or woman can safely hide in a crisis-ridden world
without food. One can not duck politics, with the idea of
taking care of one's career and family, until this storm
blows over. There is no place, for any man or woman to
hide. There is no room for today's political pragmatists
in the leadership of governments now. If we are to
survive, we must make boldly imaginative decisions, on the
condition that they are good choices, as well as bold
ones. 

type for captions, graphics:

Figure 1: Cholera at U.S. Borders

Figure 2: Zones of Contaminated Water in the Rio Grande
Hydrologic Region

Figure 3: Mexico's Maquiladoras

Figure 4: Maquiladoras Grow, Mexicans Starve

Figure 5: Mexico's Cumulative Interest Payments, Foreign
and Domestic

----
         John Covici
          [email-masked]