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	Agriculture on the Brink by Dahr Jamail TruthOut   When it comes to farming, global temperature increases spurred by anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) are bad news. Higher temperatures mean more droughts, wildfires, soil depletion and seasonal changes that, in general, have deleterious impacts on growing food.   The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change''s (IPCC) worst-case prediction by 2100 is a 4 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures.   "When I look at what the models predicted for a [4 degree Celsius] world, I see very little rain over vast swaths of populations," Dr. Ira Leifer, an atmospheric and marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Truthout.   Leifer''s concerns are dire, not only in terms of the changing rainfall patterns predicted by the IPCC, but also regarding the rainfall patterns that are already occurring across the globe.   "If Spain becomes like Algeria, where do all the Spaniards get the water to survive?" he asked. "We have parts of the world which have high populations, which have high rainfall and crops that exist there, and when that rainfall and those crops go away and the country starts looking more like some of North Africa, what keeps the people alive?"   The warning signs are already abundant. A group affiliated with the UN recently released a report showing how without dramatic international intervention, the ongoing decline of pollinating species around the world poses a dire threat to the global food supply. This is because increasing numbers of pollinating species, including butterflies and bees, are going extinct.   Another recent study showed that lack of food production, again caused by ACD, will likely cause at least half a million deaths by 2050.   Truthout spoke with scientists and farmers alike about the subject, and their outlook for the future of farming on the scale necessary to continue apace with feeding an ever-increasing global population is not good.   "The farm is a very small proportion of the economy in the US and other developed countries, but it has a disproportionate impact on global change," Professor Michael Bomford, a Ph.D. in plant and soil sciences and a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, told Truthout.   For years, Bomford has been worried about how our dependence upon oil to feed ourselves on a global scale has been causing soil degradation and depletion, as well as driving up food prices over the long run.   "Clearing land for farming releases carbon into the atmosphere and that contributes to climate change," he explained. "Then by farming it, using cultivation causes soil to be lost in wind and erosion, and that topsoil took thousands of years to form. One extreme weather event can cause us to lose thousands of years of soil."   Industrial-scale farming, upon which the massive global population -- already 7.3 billion and growing by a million people every four and half days -- relies on and impacts soil through the use of nitrogen fertilizers, which are energy intensive to produce and which deplete carbon in the soil.   "This erodes the soil''s ability to hold nutrients, and starts a positive feedback loop," added Professor Bomford. "A lot of our soils now rely on irrigation rather than rainfall, which depletes groundwater reserves."   Studies already show that ACD will likely reduce crop yields, create a malnutrition crisis and make large portions of the globe inhospitable to core food crops like bananas and maize.   ACD impacts in Mongolia are already annihilating the pastures that nomadic herders rely upon for their survival, and millions of animals are likely to die from starvation in the coming months because of pasture depletion.   More than 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa already lack access to clean drinking water. It is estimated that by 2020, that number could easily double.   In 2011, the UN''s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned of "potentially catastrophic" impacts on food production from ACD impacts that are increasingly hitting the developing world.   The report warned that food production systems and the ecosystems they depend on are highly sensitive to climate variability and change, and also noted that poor people are particularly vulnerable in countries that rely on food imports, although ACD-fuelled extreme weather events are already driving up food costs around the globe, including in developed countries like the US.   Dr. Leifer''s forecasts of once-fertile farmland going dry are, unfortunately, already coming to pass.   Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says it is high time to emphasize the link between extreme weather and the global climate in which it develops.   "The environment in which all storms form has changed owing to human activities," Dr. Trenberth said. He noted that, in particular, conditions are more moist and warm than they were even three decades ago.   "We have this extra water vapor lurking around waiting for storms to develop, and then there is more moisture as well as heat that is available for these storms [to form]. The models suggest it is going to get drier in the subtropics, wetter in the monsoon trough and wetter at higher latitudes," Trenberth explained. "This is the pattern we''re already seeing."   Beyond the problems caused by shifting weather patterns and extreme weather events, an over-reliance on non-renewable energy (both oil and gas, as well as petroleum product use in fertilizers) is also a factor contributing to the impending food crises.   William Ryerson, founder and president of the Population Media Center and Chair and CEO of the Population Institute, is also very concerned about fertilizers impact on soil. He has questioned how, in the long run, this will impact agriculture.   "The world''s agricultural systems rely substantially on increasing use of fertilizers," Ryerson told Truthout. "But now, the world''s farmers are witnessing signs of a declining response curve, where the use of additional fertilizer yields little additional food product."   According to Ryerson and many farmers Truthout has spoken with, fertilizers and intensive crop planting lower the quality of soil. These factors will increasingly limit the possibilities of raising food production substantially and will, at a minimum, boost relative food prices and cause hunger for increasing numbers of people around the world.   Carbon stored in soil allows the soil to hold nutrients and water, and losing soil contributes to climate change. Plus, Bomford is worried about other contributing factors to climate change borne from the use of chemical fertilizers.   "Agriculture produces methane and nitrous oxides, like with animal agriculture that contributes to climate change, and these have a much greater effect on climate change than CO2," he said.   Ryerson emphasizes that weather trends are already causing food shortages, and will continue to do so.   "Because of industrialization and sprawl leading to loss of agricultural land, population growth and the demand for more meat instead of grain as incomes rise, China is projected to need to import 240 million tons of food annually by the year 2030," he said.   Projections also indicate that India, which is currently a food exporter, will need to import at least an additional 30 million tons a year by 2030. However, where that food will come from is unclear.   "Yet, total world agricultural trade is currently just [approximately] 200 million tons of grain or grain equivalent, and that amount is decreasing as the exporting countries consume more and more of their own food products," said Ryerson.   Meanwhile, increasing demand for food imports by growing economies like China''s will almost certainly drive up the price of food in the coming decades, which, according to Ryerson, "virtually ensures that more people elsewhere will suffer from starvation."   According to Ryerson, this predicament is then exacerbated by the fact there are 225,000 additional people at the world’s dinner table each day that were not there the day before.   "In just one year, the equivalent of an entire population of Egypt is added to the world''s population," he said. "Driving up demand for food in the face of severe limitations on agricultural capacity."   Shifting weather patterns mean less drinking water, as well as less irrigation for farming.   Additionally, as the world continues to heat up, glaciers and snow cover are continuing to decline. This reduces water availability in countries supplied by melt water from snowpack and glaciers, so lack of drinking water and irrigation will be a problem in parts of the globe such as South America and Asia, even though these regions may not technically be in a drought.   Some regions, of course, are already in drought, thanks to ACD. Australia is getting hotter and drier. By 2030, there are forecast to be 20 percent more droughts, and it''s estimated that by 2050, the annual flow into the Murray-Darling basin will fall by up to a quarter. This basin takes up much of southeastern Australia and provides 85 percent of the water that is used for irrigation nationally.   Meanwhile, counties like India, Bangladesh, Burma and other poor countries are going to be heavily impacted by increasing floods.   Yet, given that most of us in the so-called developed world do not grow our own food, most people remain unaware of this growing global crisis.   Increasingly, farmers - and all of us who depend on them - will be facing the fact that food scarcity is becoming the new normal. Visit the related web page
	Crisis after crisis is being caused by a failed ideology: Neo-Liberalism by George Monbiot, Patrick Butler United Kingdom   It’s as if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?   Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?   So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.   Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.   Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions, that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counter-productive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.   We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.   Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.   Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.   The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.   In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.   With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as “a kind of neoliberal International”: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement’s rich backers funded a series of think tanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.   As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek’s view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way, among American apostles such as Milton Friedman, to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.   Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Milton Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.   At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The post-war consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes’s economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarassment, developing new public services and safety nets.   But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Milton Friedman remarked, “when the time came that you had to change … there was an alternative ready there to be picked up.” With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter’s administration in the United States and Jim Callaghan’s government in Britain.   After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Daniel Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”   It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan “there is no alternative”. But, as Friedrich Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet’s Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied – “my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism.” The freedom neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.   Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.   As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Milton Friedman described as “an opportunity to radically reform the educational system” in New Orleans.   Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating “investor-state dispute settlement”: offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.   http://www.monbiot.com/2016/04/15/the-zombie-doctrine/   July 2016   Vulnerable adults at risk as councils face one billion pound social care shortfall, writes Patrick Butler, for Guardian news.   Vulnerable older and disabled people face further widespread cuts to services in England after council chiefs said they will struggle to cope with a £1bn shortfall in social care funding this year.   Directors of adult social services said the outlook for care provision – from help with cooking and cleaning at home to full-time residential care – was bleak, with financial resources increasingly unable to keep up with the rising need for support.   Additional powers given to councils last year to access extra money for social care through the council tax system raised a fraction of the funds needed to cover spiralling costs, according to a survey of social care bosses.   Charities said the cuts could have serious consequences for thousands of vulnerable people who need assistance with basic living tasks such as getting up in the morning, washing themselves and getting dressed.   The survey found many councils saying they would struggle to meet their legal duties to provide care while meeting demands to make savings. There was evidence that after five years of cuts, fewer older people were eligible for help with care.   At least a quarter of the £940m savings target for 2016-17 will come from service cuts or reductions in size of the personal budgets given to people to pay for care and support. Job losses and increased fees and charges are also likely.   Harold Bodmer, the president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass), which carries out the annual survey, said ministers needed to promise adult social care the same level of protection and investment as the National Health Service (NHS).   He said: “Services are already being cut, and the outlook for future care is bleak. We’re at a tipping point where social care is in jeopardy, and unless the government addresses the chronic underfunding of the sector, there will be worrying consequences for the NHS and, most importantly, older and disabled people, their families and carers.”   Government cuts have resulted in a £4.6bn reduction in social care budgets in England since 2011, representing a real-terms net budget cut of 31%. Reductions achieved through cuts to frontline services now account for 40% of all savings.   Although the overall budget for social care in England rose fractionally last year, it was outstripped by the cost of demographic changes that have seen the number of people needing help grow.   Four-fifths of respondents to the survey, completed by all 151 councils that provide adult social care in England, said private care homes in their area faced financial difficulties. Two-thirds of councils reported that at least one local homecare or residential provider had gone bust or handed back a contract in the past six months.   Although the survey took place before the EU referendum, Adass leaders said the vote for Brexit raised questions over the future of 80,000 EU nationals currently working in social care – 6% of that workforce – at a time when the industry was desperate to expand staff numbers.   Richard Humphries, assistant director of policy at the King’s Fund thinktank, said: “Our assessment of these findings is that the immediate prospects for the social care system, on which older and disabled people depend, are grave and deteriorating.   “The diminishing confidence that local authorities can meet their most basic legal duties to provide care for the most vulnerable citizens should be a huge source of public concern.”   Nick Forbes, the senior vice-chair of the Local Government Association, said: “It cannot be solely left to local council taxpayers to fix our chronically underfunded social care system. Councils, care providers, charities and the NHS are all united around the need for central government to fully fund adult social care as this is vital to ensure our loved ones enjoy the dignified quality of life they deserve.   “As a starting point, the government should bring forward desperately needed social care funding earmarked for the end of the decade to allow councils to protect vital social care services essential to easing the pressure on care providers and on the NHS.”   Alice Mitchell-Pye, the policy manager at the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability, said England had reached a tipping point in social care. “That two-thirds of social care directors are not confident they can deliver their statutory duties this year should ring alarm bells for us all.   “Failure to do so means in reality that thousands of disabled and older people will be left isolated without the vital support they need.”   http://www.jrf.org.uk/ http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/ Visit the related web page
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