Transition agriculture and American imperialism
December 16th, 2007 by Jim JustSharon Astyk at Causabon’s Book explores the transition in agriculture that will be inevitable as a consequence of peak oil and asks:
“[I]s a shift to a new kind of agriculture likely to be inherently disruptive? Are food prices likely to rise out of control, and shortages occur, creating famines and malnutrition?”
Her answer: “It depends.”
She argues that system failure is only one possible outcome, and spins out a plausible alternative, based on a transition to a sustainable agriculture that includes large numbers of gardens; an increase number of farmers making a real and adequate living; eliminating middlemen, processing, shipping and supermarkets; increased food quality; and a decrease in shrinkage throughout the production and distribution chains.
One comment raises a question that isn’t yet being asked in our political discourse:
“Were we, for example, in America to give up the project of empire, keep a defense-suited only, smaller military, and move the same tax subsidies into food price stabilization and (vastly cheaper) investments in agricultural job training for the young men and women who now go into the military, we could expect to see several million new young, healthy farmers, lower overhead costs for their training, medical care and lifetime disability from being blown up or blowing people up, and an enormous new body of food producers, with stable prices.
When did we take on the project of empire? Although the roots of American empire go way back (for example, the genocide of the Native American populations and Manifest Destiny, the wars with Mexico resulting in the annexation of Texas, California and the entire Southwest, the Spanish-American War in which we seized the Philippines and Puerto Rico and installed “friendly” regimes throughout Central and South America), the imperial project really got going after WWII when we found ourselves the “last man standing.”
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U.S. Military Bases in the World 2007
Where is the call for America to return to its republican principles, to dismantle the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against and the web of military installations, and to slash war spending to a small fraction of the current 51% of the Federal government’s budget? Not even Dennis Kucinich is promising to shrink – much less radically slash – “defense” spending. His bright idea is to establish another department, the Department of Peace, as a “counterbalance.”
For 2007, the DOD budget was US$532.8 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance and production (which is in the Department of Energy budget), Veterans Affairs or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which are largely funded through extra-budgetary supplements, e.g. $120 billion in 2007). In addition, the United States has black budget – military spending which is not listed as Federal spending and is not included in published military spending figures.
The USA is responsible for about 46% of the world’s military expenditures, distantly followed by the UK, France, Japan and China with 4-5 per cent each.
Here’s the bottom line: we won’t be able to afford to make the changes required to deal with our energy/climate crises as long as we’re squandering what remaining wealth we have on trying to bully the rest of the world into submission.