The rise and rise of agribusiness

More than 35 per cent of farm receipts in Maryland come from chicken, produced like so many pieces of machinery: 292.9 million “broilers” in 2002. Maryland’s chicken factories leave a vast footprint of ecological devastation and social upheaval in what used to be rural countryside.

What happens in Maryland and the University of Maryland is typical of the United States and the rest of the “industrialised” world. Without public debate, agribusiness has high jacked the universities and governments for the illusionary claims of productivity and feeding the world.

The legalisation of organic or biological farming pacified a vocal sector of citizens, giving a chance to agribusiness to continue with its global conquest.

As long as governments and farm professors see organic-biological farming through the prism of agribusiness, not much good is likely to come from the agricultural schools.

Private wealth is needed to secure a scientific and honourable place for family farming in university classrooms. In 2002, the Clarence Heller Charitable Foundation gave the University of California $ 450,000 for sustainable farming research.

However, public policies are necessary to reverse the agribusiness course of farm schools, demanding that public funds educate students in the skills of family farmers. These small-scale farmers would be the best means of revitalising democracy, creating and spreading wealth, and raising healthy food while protecting the integrity of nature.

Students would often rather avoid factory-farming courses, but they are starved of instruction about farming that raises good food and democracy in the land and their lives. The least we can do is help them fulfill their dreams.