JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
Food crises and the spectre of collapse
We need alternative modes of food production, but these won’t come out of an adherence to today’s corporately rigged markets or from a politics desperate to become more anodyne by the day, warns ALAN SIMPSON

“Tractors to the left of us, Tractors to the right.
Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.”
This isn’t how Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade poem opens up, but residents of across Europe’s capital cities could be forgiven for thinking it should have done.
In Brussels, people had to run the gauntlet of tractors lining both sides of streets around the European Parliament; all part of farmer protests against cuts in fuel subsidies, land set-aside obligations and low-cost food imports.
The protests kicked off everywhere. Germany, France, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Poland, Britain and the Netherlands, all witnessed demonstrations about farming in crisis.
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