Skip to main content
Food production: it's time a for a rural rising
Simple improvements in countryside communities' income, working conditions and economic support is urgently necessary, but a plan for a revolution in agriculture is also needed — and entirely feasible, argues PHIL KATZ
Tractor

THE WAR in Ukraine has demonstrated how tenuous our food chain is. Climate change and July’s record-breaking heatwave served as a warning, as animals and crops struggled with the heat as much as humans. The threat of water shortage is back. Seven million adults visited a foodbank in May. And in a country that imports more than 80 per cent of its fruit and over 45 per cent of its vegetables from abroad, fuel price rises will affect food price rises.

Monopoly ownership in the energy, water and food sectors will ensure that prices carry on rising. To transform our countryside we need first to talk about land ownership, monopoly control of food retail, hedge fund speculation, climate change and long-term plans.

Who owns what?

Liberation webinar, 30 November2024, 6pm (UK)
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
RS
Features / 18 January 2025
18 January 2025
From anti-apartheid work to uniting migrant workers, Sutton showed us how to build worker power, keeping socialism’s flame burning bright, and leaving London’s mighty May Day parade as his legacy, writes Phil Katz
Reform UK
Features / 28 October 2024
28 October 2024
In the last of a three-part series, PHIL KATZ explains how unions are best placed to present a positive, pro-worker, pro-public services alternative to the narrative of division, deregulation and greed peddled by Farage’s party
Farage
Features / 27 October 2024
27 October 2024
In the second of a three-part analysis, PHIL KATZ looks at areas where the labour movement should be able to demolish the new right-wing upstart party: its economic policies and attitude to the welfare state
NF
Features / 26 October 2024
26 October 2024
Farage's party is a political machine deeply tied to the interests of US big business, writes PHIL KATZ in the first of a series of features on this growing force in British politics