On 14th and 15th October in Bergamo, the G7 agriculture will be held, a theatrical consensus where the “powerful” of the earth will flourish green colors of sustainability, organic agriculture, small and local productions, at km 0. What Happens And it will happen concretely, not solely in this summit, is throwing the small agricultural producers, territories, populations and natural ecosystems into the gloomy corners of the global market by continuing to feed and sustain agribusinnes.
The techno-industrial system can not be sustainable by its very constitution. Greening is part of the necessary garment with which power appears in these official occasions: green is the way it can cover and justify disadvantages of any kind.
If agriculture G7 takes place in Bergamo, we have to go to the Minister of Agriculture Martina. Even he, originally from these territories, may want to feel like “km 0” as the agricultural cultures he has never seen, but he likes to tell the story at every convention. He recently stated that his will, upholding the G7, is “giving voice to peasants, farmers and fishermen from all over the world to tackle key issues together.”
How can we think that the peasantry’s voice may be in the face of strong powers such as political, scientific, and multinational companies? The only thing that this statement implies, in our view, is rather the creation of new bodies and powers which, while claiming to represent people, crush any residual autonomy left and introduce new harms certified by the competent body of turn. When we do not take what we want but delegate some representative we do not buy freedom, we simply change our master. When these powers say that they want to cooperate with all stakeholders, it means that they are not just taking advantage of it, but they want more and more atomized people to participate in their exploitation on a voluntary basis: here is the triumph of democracy and progressive principles!
These new powers / bosses are thus welcomed by the old ones in the rooms of the palaces and together, they share what remains of a world increasingly scattered. The genetic erosion of agricultural crops has now shifted to the ever-more intoxicated minds of this techno-scientific system which on one side destroys life and on the other promises to “redo” nature in the lab through biotechnology and, today, Even with nanotechnologies, in a convergence that led us to synthetic biology.
Of this scenario, it is indispensable to make some examples to understand what the “green world” of the technology industry is so fond of promoters of unlimited progress. We will also be at “Km 0”!
In Stezzano (BG) is the center for genetic research on cereal crops in which scientists manipulate the DNA of corn plants and then introduce them into the agricultural circuit. This means that agriculture is now heavily dependent on patrons and that, as is already the case in many parts of the world, ancient and widespread knowledge is supplanted by the new scientific verb: even if the seeds of the “green revolution” have no No miracle, we will think of the hybrid genetically manipulated and CRISP (“Gravity Handling Technique Evolution”) In vast areas of the world peasants undergo the control, arrogance and violence of the big multinationals Such as Monsanto imposing their rules, primarily through commercial treaties that also legitimize repression. The “possibility” of choice is a mere chimera: the only choice is among the pages of their catalogs … This is what the powerful G7 want – a world in which people, and especially those who produce food from small agriculture They are stripped of any autonomy; A world in which agrobusinness signs are owners of the DNA of living beings. A totally artificial world where experimental field and laboratory become the new company, with one share of risks and benefits. “New” society in which those who are sacrificable to the market or to the progress god always come from the same direction: the exploited and exploitable of yesterday and today. When these manipulations enter into the bodies we can easily realize without the need for technical or expert knowledge of the extent to which power has colonized every sphere of the living.
Another example: Grassobbio (BG) is headquartered by the Israeli chemical multinational Adama, which produces and markets poisonings used in our campaigns, among which one of the most damaging and even the most widespread: glyphosate. Companies like these make the air we breathe, the water we drink and the foods we eat are deadly cocktails of molecules produced in the lab. The harmful effects of poisons on living organisms are so many: genetic malformations, desertification, up to the death of animals, plants, and entire ecosystems. Another unpleasant legacy of this war against nature is climate change. Obviously even a company like Adama could not have its own list of lies and environmental rhetoric: in fact it also sells “green” organic products! This is the biological meaning for the agri-food industry: a new market area. Nothing further away from the sensitivity and culture of those who still produce food without using poisons. How can economics and capitalism be sustainable? In other words, how is it possible that endless exploitation and accumulation in a finite planet are sustainable? This is what the economy does: absorb anything that can and make it profitable. There seems to be the same process that is happening for most organic farming products: what is a natural product? Beyond what it contains, its methods of cultivation and production, it is now part of a smart marketing form, the same as the “echo” prefix to sell the usual poisons. Human bodies and other animals, as well as the surrounding environment, are saturated with these poisons, and the best way to keep up with them, in addition to economic blackmail, is by deceiving a rustic, bucolic, green and natural.
To promote their world model, the various G7, Expo, need characters such as Martina and all those who have seen in the biological and in the harm management industry the new chance to go ahead and grind profits. In order to respond to this need, Bergamo has just been created the “bio district” which, beyond the propaganda image itself, as an entity that promotes sustainability, is by no means the natural landing place to which small Agricultural realities that for years, in Bergamo and elsewhere, are really involved in projects where no poisons are used and who would rather criticize the dominant pattern of food production. What is actually the bio-district tells us again Minister Martina, who intervened at the inauguration of this body last November in the palace of the Province, asserted that the “bio district will be the passepartout for the G7 agriculture.” What is and how it functions is also evident from the conference organized by the bio-district itself in mid-June in Bergamo: they have been called upon to host a whole array of trade associations, technicians, presidents, mayors and councilors who in various ways have continued To shake this “attention to small productions and the economy from the bottom”. But where were the small producers then? Obviously there could not be because some contexts when talking about small have the intensive mind when thinking of innovation dream dreams of technology parks and business incubators and if they talk about biological are already thinking of poisoning, according to law, with “biological” “Maybe coming from Romania.
There are plenty of reflections to be done and we hope each one begins to make them with their own head and confronting others. We think that instead of proposing “magic formulas” for change as do specialists of dissent and politics, it is important today to restart radical critique in this world to begin to detoxify all the dangers of the bodies and minds. We think it is important to realize that we live in a condition of obvious dependence on this system and that if it is its abatement we want, we will have to begin to act concretely every day, trying to tear more and more spaces of freedom and autonomy.
By colonizing with each message channel its information channel, the system often makes us believe that there is no chance of living and thinking of a radically different world. One thing is certain, another world is possible, but we have to get rid of it before that. Whoever tells us that it is possible to co-exist with this exemplary exploitation, perhaps speaking of labeling, precautionary method, traceability and security, often represents the impostor who is not going to change anything but simply seeks an ethical and solidal niche where to settle and nudge.With this coordination of critical people against the G7 we want to try to make sense of what these official meetings are and to uncover who from these meetings are profitable to continue to keep things as they are, declaring themselves an opponent but, concretely, sustaining and serving the powers always Tall and strong.
Our path of criticism and struggle does not start with the G7 agriculture and will definitely not end with the October summit here in Bergamo. We think it is important to go back to mobilizing ourselves and build critical paths that can also go from food production from below, with non-poisoned land and self-production, small markets disconnected from bio-industrial rules and certifications, until opposition moments ‘Poisoning in progress, for example against pesticides, GMOs, industrial monocultures …
We do not want to be an alternative, we have nothing to replace and smuggle into this market: the alternative to war is not peace, rather a world where the very premises for which a war can be cut off at the root.
Ecological Assembly “Le Ortiche”
Contact: avvelenate@anche.no
Download the flyer pdf: G7 DEFINITIVE