British Empire Threshes Australian Wheat Board
By Alli Perebikovsky and Stephanie Nelson
Our own tragic folly in policy shaping over the last decades taunts us now, like a sick joke at the expense of the poorest people. The nature of the global systemic financial and economic breakdown has brought back Holbein’s Death, whose impish grin once again accompanies the scenes of everyday life. His husbandman could be any farmer in the world today, whose toil is mocked by the intentional collapse of agriculture under the free trade system of globalization. That is why today we face a world food shortage, whose approach could have and should have been foreseen.
In the middle of this growing crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held a meeting June 3-5 in Rome, where a fight ensued between free market policies and protectionist trade for food security. Although free trade policies suffered defeat, no effective remedy was established, and the 850 million people worldwide facing starvation found no alleviation.
Moving into that FAO conference, Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued a call for the world’s policy makers to kill the World Trade Organization (WTO) and double world food production. On the heels of that mobilization, LaRouche PAC issued a food policy memorandum, demanding the same two points and offering examples of where the needed food could be grown to immediately avert the starvation of hundreds of millions of human beings. Obvious potential lies in the world’s foremost granaries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Were these and other countries allowed to produce at full capacity, one planting season would be all that is needed to wipe out hunger. Unfortunately, the latest developments in these countries leave future farming doubtful.
The Imperial British Commonwealth has just delivered a crippling blow to Australia’s wheat production, by a Parliamentary vote to dissolve the single desk of the Australian Wheat Board (AWB), leaving it completely deregulated. Under the single desk system, the AWB had a monopoly over Australian wheat exports, guaranteeing farmers a parity price for their crops, to the benefit of the small and family farmers who otherwise would have been crushed by grain cartels and speculators.
History of the AWB
In 1929, the Australian government set up a committee, chaired by J.B. Brigden, to examine the pros and cons of Australia’s protectionist policy. This report entitled, The Australian Tariff: an Economic Enquiry, exposed the intentions of the British Empire to keep Australia’s population down to a total of five million people through imperial free trade policies. Brigden’s committee found that the Empire intended to create a landed aristocracy of Australian farmers to dig up and export vital raw materials into London itself. Rather than capitulate to the imperial looting system, the committee recommended protectionist measures, which laid the foundations for the Australian Wheat Board.
In the early 1940’s, the Curtin government, in collaboration with US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, took up this fight for protectionism, established the Wheat Board, and set a precedent for McEwen’s later reforms. Jock Campbell, an advisor to Trade Minister John McEwen in the 1950’s, summarized the findings of the Brigden report: “Australia would be a country where there would be a handful of people—I think they said 5 millions—and they would grow wool and beef and mine lead. There would be no manufacturing industry and the maximum the country could support would be 5 million who would live at an extraordinarily high level of average income because they were the worlds best at it. Those who were lucky to have a slice of it would do tremendously well.” At the time, Australia had a population of about 9 million people.
In opposition to this intentional policy of genocide in Australia, the government used the chaos and harsh conditions during the years leading up to WWII to establish the modern-day AWB. The precedent for the AWB began in 1915, during WWI, when Australian farmers, devastated by the speculative actions of the grain cartels, pooled their wheat together and demanded a floor price for their goods. In order to institutionalize that authority, a wheat board was established and maintained throughout the war. However, in 1921, the board was taken down by the government, and farmers, forced back into the horrid conditions of British free trade, were driven out of business. Australia’s next opportunity for launching a wheat board came in 1939 when the modern-day single desk AWB was established.
Under the governorship of John Curtin as the Australian Prime Minister and later, John McEwen as Minister for Trade, the wheat board acted as a regulatory agency mediating between the local Australian farmer and the preying financial grain cartels. The wheat board would set a fair floor price for all wheat, farmers would deliver their grains into the AWB storage bins, immediately receiving a check for the grains, and the AWB, drawing from the wheat pool, would take care of its export and trade. This regulation upheld the livelihood of small and local farmers, regardless of grain quality or time harvested. On top of this, the Curtin and McEwen governments, explicitly against the free trade imperial policies which had run Australian agriculture and industry into the ground over the previous two decades, ensured the establishment of credit for infrastructure and development projects to aid the production and manufacturing systems of Australia. Over the intervening decades this system was so successful that Australia became an industrial and agricultural powerhouse, which, today, exports over 15% of the world’s wheat.
Since the 1980’s, however, the hand of the commonwealth, grabbing for the riches of Australia’s raw materials base, has reached directly into the heart of the nation in an attempt to dismantle the protective wheat board. In 1986, the Australian parliamentary system enacted the first of a series of laws to aid in the deregulation and breaking down of the AWB. To enforce this legislation, in 1999, the AWB was turned into a corporation, AWB, Ltd., and private interests were given power to veto the export of its wheat. With its new status as a private company, not directly tied to the government, the AWB was implicated as the greatest of over 2,000 offenders in the supposed Iraq “oil-for-food” crisis and its grain export contract with Iraq was immediately terminated. Using this scandal and the “monopolistic actions” of the AWB as an excuse, the commonwealth shut down the board’s export monopoly in 2003 to make way for complete, unregulated free trade. The final bomb was dropped last Thursday, June 19, 2008, when the Australian Senate voted to eliminate the single desk system of the AWB, the last protective measure between the predatory grain cartels and the demoralized local family farmer.<1>
Battle at the Capital
Hundreds of Australian farmers, dependent for their livelihood on the regulatory measures of the wheat board’s single desk system turned out the week before the vote to hold rallies in Australia’s capital, and protest the implementation of the devastating legislation. As one farmer put it, “the dismantling of the wheat board means the difference between my planting a full crop this year, or just half of my crop, or even none at all!” The Australian LaRouche Youth Movement, coming off of a week of meetings with parliamentarians about the AWB legislation, mobilized the lower 80% farmers as a force to intervene against the AWB takedown and to rally around a 9-point solution2 for reviving the grain capability of the nation.
Meanwhile, inside the Parliament, Senator Barnaby Joyce, the leading official campaigning for the rights of the farmers, led an all-out fight to save the Australian Wheat Board from going under. Filibustering the Parliament, Joyce argued that the passage of the bill will lead to the utter destruction of the small and local wheat farmers while allowing for the complete and unchecked plunder by grain cartels. The following is an exchange between Senator Joyce and the moderator, Senator Sherry, regarding the new structure for the wheat board<3>:
Senator Joyce (Queensland): …is there even one position on the board quarantined exclusively for someone who has had experience in growing wheat?
Senator Sherry (Tasmania: Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law): The answer is no. There is no specifically allocated person on the board, but the selection criteria include that as one of the criteria against which a recommendation will be made to the minister.
Joyce: It would be peculiar in the extreme if one of the criteria was not wheat. Thank you for answering the question, Minister. You have now confirmed that no-one on the board need necessarily have any experience in wheat, and the board could be totally selected without anyone having any experience in wheat. Yet this is the body that is going to have the Australian wheat industry in its hands….Since it is now quite obvious that the selection panel, which we know for a fact has nobody on it who is involved in the growing of wheat, may select a board [for Wheat Exports Australia] that does not necessarily have on it any person involved in the growing of wheat, and we know that the minister has no selection criteria with which to consider people's experience in the growing of wheat, do you think that there is the capacity for the board to make the wrong decisions?
Temporary Chairman: There is no response. Senator Joyce, I draw to your attention the standing order.
Joyce: That is fine. 'No response,' is the answer I heard.
Does that person have to be an Australian citizen?
Sherry: I am happy to take that on notice and come back to you.
Joyce: Having perused the legislation I can inform the minister that they do not.
With the new system, Australian agriculture is subjected to a free-for-all in terms of marketing and wheat export! Major grain cartels are given the right to cherry pick the types of wheat and farming they want to buy up. This leaves the door open for large corporations and companies to take over the Australian wheat industry, kick small farmers out of business, and drastically reduce the amount of wheat being produced and exported.
The take-down of Australia’s wheat board comes on top of a many year takeover and destruction of small local farms in the nation. For years, the government has refused to implement the necessary infrastructure projects, such as developing the Murray Darling River basin system, in order to have flourishing agriculture throughout the entire region. As a matter of fact, under the auspices of environmentalism<4>, local governments and companies have been paying farmers to give up their rights to water and, for $1,000 per megalitre, have been buying up and diverting the water away from parched farmland and allowing it to flow freely into the ocean! Australia, if activated can and must help to double the food production of the world! It is completely insane, that in the middle of the world’s greatest hunger crisis, the commonwealth is doing everything possible to eliminate Australia’s ability to become a major granary for our poverty stricken world.
What About the Other Granaries?
The remaining three major granaries are facing their own uphill battles. Canada is especially threatened by the recent vote in Australia. They have their own wheat board, and the decision against the AWB is viewed as a precedent for the British Imperialists who want to do the same to the Canadian Wheat Board. The implications this would have on the world should conjure this image of Holbein’s wicked Death again. Canada accounts for 50% of the world’s wheat exports, so that Canada and Australia combined are responsible for 65% of world wheat exports. If farmers continue to be subjected to free trade policies that make it impossible for them to make a living, and multinational cartels take over with the intention to decrease the food supply, humanity will face an unimaginable crisis.
Argentina’s impressive grains production has recently been replaced by soy monoculture, so that soy now accounts for 54% of all Argentine grain production, with a devastating effect on their soil. Large “sowing pools”—speculative investment funds—have also been organized, and have seized control over the soy export business. In March of this year, the Kirchner government issued a decree to raise export taxes on soybean and sunflower seeds, in defense of the general welfare. In reaction, a phony “people’s” movement has been organized against the “tyrannical” Kirchner government, with agriculture producers going on strike (in the middle of a grave food crisis!). Implicated in this is George Soros, identified by LaRouche PAC as the top British agent meddling in the U.S. Presidential campaign.<5> Soros owns one of Argentina’s largest sowing pools, Adecoagro. The Kirchner government has pointed their finger repeatedly at these funds as the financial interests behind the strikes.
In the U.S., storms hit the Mid-West in early June, causing vast flooding in an area with an incredible concentration of grain and livestock production, processing, shipping, and farm machinery manufacture. The total damage is yet to be calculated, but it will inevitably hit the global food system very hard. Natural disasters never have good timing, but with starvation and food riots occurring at alarming rates, the flooding of one of the world’s largest corn and wheat belts is an especially devastating blow. The tragedy is that the damage could have been contained, had the proper infrastructure been built. Similar but less severe flooding struck the same area in 1993, drawing attention then to the inadequate infrastructure in the region. Lyndon LaRouche issued a call to restore the Army Corp of Engineers and finish the flood control and development projects in the upper regions of the Mississippi River basin through a retooling of the auto industry. None of these warnings were heeded.
Whether it is decreasing food production while population levels rise, refusing to build vital infrastructure, or continuing with deregulation and free trade, we have no excuses for the deadly effects of these policies, except for our own folly. We have the capability to scrap this system of lunacy and save civilization, but we must act NOW!
Footnotes:
1. Technicalities require a second vote which expects the legislation to pass.
2. Citizens Electoral Council Leaflet, Australia Must Act Now to Address Global Food Crisis, http://cec.cecaust.com.au/
3. Commonwealth Senate Hansard in Canberra, Australia, Thursday, June 19, 2008. A transcript can be found at: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/work/journals/index.htm
4. Environ-mental-ism is a highly contagious disease which had spread rapidly throughout nations all over the world in the 1960's and 1970's. It was believed to have been acquired from the incidental mating of one unfortunate man with a monkey. The offspring is present day Al Gore.
5. See LPAC Dossier, Your Enemy George Soros, 2008
Defend the Canadian Wheat Board! "The history of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) is grounded in the experience of farmers prior to World War I. Many farmers at the time felt captive to the railways, the line elevator companies, and the Winnipeg Grain Exchange for the delivery, weighing, grading, and pricing of their grain. They wanted greater power and protection for themselves in the grain marketing system. They developed a strong confidence in cooperative strategies and government intervention for addressing their needs...” (www.cwb.ca) The first CWB, established in 1919, utilized a two-payment system: one payment in the spring and another in the fall, depending on price levels. The federal government guaranteed any shortfalls due to low prices, effectively setting a floor price for the farmers' produce. The second, and current, CWB, now representing over 75,000 farmers, was established in 1935 to protect the farming community from the ravages of the Great Depression. Its role has changed a great deal over the years, but its function in promoting the great interest of Canada's Western farmers has endured. In the 1960's the CWB began making direct deals and entering into long term contracts with its customers, such as the governments of Russia and China, thus circumventing the speculators and middlemen, a decision which the grain cartels have never forgiven. Today the CWB is the world's single largest grain exporter and the last of the big international Wheat Boards; in 2007 it exported 21.5 million tons of grain. The current Conservative Government of Stephen Harper is committed to terminating the CWB, but has recently received a major setback. A Federal Court Judge ruled on June 20 that the Harper Government had violated Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it issued a directive in 2005 forbidding the CWB from promoting or defending its own existence in the media, while the government organized a massive media campaign aimed at manipulating farmers into supporting the dissolution of the Wheat Board's mandate. Unfortunately for Harper the CWB remains exceptionally popular among Western farmers, and it can only be eliminated through a farmer plebiscite, something which is highly unlikely for the near future. However, with the dissolution of the Australian Wheat Board the CWB will come under increasing pressure. With the floods now hitting the U.S. breadbasket, the grain cartels pushing for completely liberalized trade and many countries already facing food shortages, the world cannot afford to lose the CWB, which could be a precedent for other nations such as Argentina, which have shown interest in reviving grain marketing boards of their own in defense of the general welfare. —Rob Ainsworth
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