{"id":216422,"date":"2022-07-11T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=216422"},"modified":"2022-07-10T06:56:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T05:56:53","slug":"achieving-self-funding-local-sovereignty-as-global-food-systems-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/07\/achieving-self-funding-local-sovereignty-as-global-food-systems-collapse\/","title":{"rendered":"Achieving Self-Funding Local Sovereignty as Global Food Systems Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

9 Jul 2022 – The solution to the current food crisis is small and local, including growing food locally. But how to fund local food co-ops without pricey loans from big banks?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cDeglobalizing\u201d and \u201cdedollarizing\u201d have been much in the news. Reducing dependence on the global supply chain and the U.S. dollar are trends that are happening not just internationally but locally. In the United States, we have seen movements both for local food independence and to divest from Wall Street banks. The burgeoning cryptocurrency movement is another push to \u201cdedollarize\u201d and escape the international bankers\u2019 control grid.<\/p>\n

This article is a sequel to\u00a0one discussing home gardens and community food co-ops<\/a>\u00a0as local counter-measures to an impending food crisis. The question to be addressed here is how to fund them. What sort of local currency could fund food co-ops independently of the credit dollars we get from banks?<\/p>\n

But first, some framing of the problem. It\u2019s not just about temporary food shortages. It\u2019s about sovereignty from the sort of global control foreshadowed in\u00a0Henry Kissinger\u2019s notorious statement<\/a>, \u201cControl food and you control the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The War on Food<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alarmed commentators are observing that our food systems seem to be under attack. In\u00a0a June 14 article<\/a>, ZeroHedge republished a list of 99\u00a0accidental fires<\/a>\u00a0hampering America\u2019s food supply chain since January 2021. Meanwhile, many\u00a0farmers are unable to get the supplies<\/a>\u00a0they need to produce food, from fertilizers to herbicides to tractor parts; and small trucking companies that deliver food to grocery stores are being\u00a0driven into insolvency by unprecedented diesel gas prices<\/a>. There has also been a surge of\u00a0cyberattacks on agricultural companies<\/a>\u00a0during critical planting and harvest seasons. And an estimated\u00a010,000 head of cattle died<\/a>\u00a0mysteriously in Kansas feedlots. The deaths were officially attributed to a heat wave but that explanation is\u00a0disputed by farmers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In July 2020, the Rockefeller Foundation published a white paper called \u201cReset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System<\/a>.\u201d It summarized discussions of over 100 leaders and experts brought together to design a \u201creset\u201d of the food system. A skeptical Irish blogger notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The first question anybody should be asking is \u201cHow would the Rockefeller Foundation know about upcoming food shortages\u201d in 2020. Naturally it was just a calculated guess on their part. Isn\u2019t it also interesting that the title was \u201cReset the Table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surely just another coincidence considering \u201cThe Great Reset\u201d was announced on 3rd June 2020. Amazing how they can get all their ducks in a row lined up so quickly considering Covid had only officially been on the block for a few months.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The hunger problem in July 2020 stemmed from unemployment and Covid-19 lockdowns, which had\u00a0just begun nationally<\/a>\u00a0at the end of March. A January 2022 meta-analysis from Johns Hopkins University<\/a> concluded that \u201clockdowns have had little to no public health effects, [but] they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the Rockefeller Foundation, however, the Covid crisis and policy response were an \u201copportunity\u201d to make transformative changes in our food system, including \u201cmodernizing data and technology platforms.\u201d The July 2020 white paper proclaimed:<\/p>\n

Food is medicine \u2026 One of Covid-19\u2019s legacies should be that it was the moment Americans realized the need to treat nutritious food as a part of health care \u2026. By integrating healthy food into the health care system, doctors could prescribe produce as easily as pharmaceuticals and reduce utilization of expensive health services that are often required because of nutrition insecurity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cDoctors could prescribe produce as easily as pharmaceuticals \u2026.\u201d Food can be prescribed, controlled and rationed. The Irish blogger wrote, \u201cThe plan is to centralize and control the food supply into one body, one\u00a0single executive office.\u201d In\u00a0a May 2022 podcast<\/a>, Christian Westbrook, the \u201cIce Age Farmer,\u201d mused:<\/p>\n

Where vaccine passports failed, food passports will now be eagerly accepted by hungry people who can\u2019t afford rapidly inflating food prices. This is the realization of a longstanding agenda by the Rockefeller\/UN\/WEF crowd to, as Kissinger put it, \u201ccontrol food, and control people.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sort of control grid is what concerns preppers\u201d and \u201csurvivalists\u201d \u2013 people preparing for large-scale societal collapse. But we don\u2019t need to go down that controversial rabbit hole for confirmation that a major food crisis is on the horizon.\u00a0President Biden has said as much<\/a>, and\u00a0the head of the UN World Food Program has warned<\/a>\u00a0that we are heading into the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.<\/p>\n

The crisis is systemic, predating Covid. As Australian author\u00a0Dr. Liz Elliott<\/a>\u00a0colorfully illustrates the problem in an as-yet-unpublished preface to her book \u201cA New Way Now: Solutions to Financial and Climate Collapse\u201d:<\/p>\n

Corporations have become bigger than ancient countries, steamrolling over Life like invading armies.\u2026 Long supply chains are making food, machines and energy insecure. So much transport, needing so much oil, just to bring carrots and soap from cheap labour places. Third World people are realizing the money driven system is the extension of Colonialism; exploitation of their work and land by those who control money and weapons.\u2026<\/p>\n

These few then drive public policy towards more centralization, more scientific determinism, more technocratic \u201csolutions,\u201d more standardization, more war, more ideology.\u2026<\/p>\n

If large corporations and banks are the problem, then the solution is small and local.\u2026 The path to decentralization is already being forged in a million initiatives everywhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The solution is small and local, including growing food locally. But how to fund local food co-ops without pricey loans from big banks?<\/p>\n

Food-backed Local Credit as Money<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a 2014 article titled \u201cThe Truth Is Out: Money Is Just an IOU, and the Banks Are Rolling in It<\/a>,\u201d the late David Graeber underscored the fact that money is basically just credit. What triggered his article was the Bank of England\u2019s acknowledgment in its first\u00a0 quarterly report that year that virtually all of the money we use in trade is simply created on the books of banks when they make loans. It is credit advanced by the bank against the borrower\u2019s promise to repay it, preferably backed by some form of collateral. Local currencies and cryptocurrencies can work in the same way.<\/p>\n

To be useful today as \u201cmoney,\u201d a currency is said to need these\u00a0four main attributes<\/a>. It should serve as:<\/p>\n